


Rough Magic

by gondalsqueen



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: (but it will take us a while to get there), Boss Battle, Canon-Typical Violence, Caretaking, Defensiveness, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Friendship, Guess Who's Back, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Oral Sex, Sypha Belnades is a gift to this earth, Trevor Belmont really loves to fight things, Vaginal Sex, and 'functional alcoholic' is a real thing, and I want to see Trevor realize that, and a little light roleplaying, and sometimes she's a bit self-righteous isn't she?, because they're monsters in the Castlevania games, because what is a fanfiction without h/c, but Alucard plays it really close to the vest, but dude has hardcore trauma, but like what's the ethical stance there?, but not our boy and our girl, but she's not a huge fan of beer, canon-typical nasty terrible people, content warning: people do really boring research, fighting night creatures, hey we found the romance!, hey we found the sex too!, like sincerely, massacre at lindenfeld in fact, mild to moderate angst, more significant emotional injuries, oh also more sex, or self-destruction, sypha likes getting tipsy, sypha still hams it up too much, they get up to some stuff okay?, vampire ethics, we joke about trevor and beer, we should talk about werewolves sometime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:21:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24015871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: "The first time Trevor met Sypha Belnades, she very nearly threw up on his face. Then she fell down a hole, took him along, and raised a vampire—or bloody close enough, anyway. Not an auspicious beginning for a monster hunter. She was annoyingly small and young and pretty in a way that spoke of vulnerability, and clearly a fan of getting herself into trouble that she couldn’t get out of. So Trevor had, admittedly, been skeptical of Sypha from the start."Or: Trevor Belmont has never been so happy to be so very wrong about someone.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya & Trevor Belmont & Sypha Belnades, Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades
Comments: 144
Kudos: 110





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story about how much I love Sypha Belnades, from the point of view of Trevor Belmont, because... well. 
> 
> Calling it a "story" is really a little ambitious. I like to think about characters: why they do the things they do, how they fit together, how they become better people. I can't think it out unless I write scenes with these characters in them. This one is heavy on the character development and lighter on the plot. We'll have some fighting and some sex down the road (and the rating is sure to jump to "explicit" at some point, so watch for that), but it's going to stay fairly episodic. I just want to see what these guys do in Seasons 2 and 3 of Castlevania. So...let's call it a thinkpiece. 
> 
> "Hey, gondalsqueen, is this, like, Sypha/Trevor exclusively? I notice you have Alucard listed in relationships, but there's no little slash between his name and anyone else's. How do you feel about polyamory?" 
> 
> I mean, come on, that's a loaded question, don't you think? 
> 
> I don't know whether I'll ship Alucard with Trevor and Sypha eventually or not. A lot of people online are having a lot of fun with this, and you're a convincing group. I want to see where Season 4 takes the show, first. And mostly, I'm still trying to figure things out and I'm dealing with Trevor's view of Sypha, first. You learn to juggle two balls before you add a third. (Okay, that metaphor did not sound good, but you know what I meant.)There is certainly a bond of love between all three of them. What that will mean, especially considering that Sypha's all, "Hey, I can't sit still, let's leave Alucard here and go fight some monsters," I don't yet know. 
> 
> Full disclosure: The story starts with some not-explicitly-romantic relationship exploration between all three of them, but it is going in the Trevor/Sypha direction because they will eventually leave at the end of Season 2 (and I haven't planned anything past the end of Season 3).
> 
> Enjoy, folks.

The first time Trevor met Sypha Belnades, she very nearly threw up on his face. Then she fell down a hole, took him along, and raised a vampire—or bloody close enough, anyway. Not an auspicious beginning for a monster hunter. 

She was annoyingly small and young and pretty in a way that spoke of vulnerability, and clearly a fan of getting herself into trouble that she couldn’t get out of. So Trevor had, admittedly, been skeptical of Sypha from the start. It wasn’t just her obvious savior complex, which was about as complex, he thought, as a teenage crush. No, it was _her_. She wanted to fight Dracula with him and she couldn’t even take down one cyclops. Now he had to worry about undead threats and human threats AND keep her from getting killed.

And then there was that absolute prick Alucard, who had the balls to go and have a personality. One rule was sacred in the Belmont family mythos: if it bit like a monster and flew like a monster, it was a monster.

He wasn’t prepared for a monster that sassed him like a rich boy with a stick up his ass instead of biting. And he wasn’t… really sure that being an aristocratic crotchlouse was a good enough reason to kill someone.

If he was lucky, Trevor decided, he’d keep enough distance from both of them to avoid getting killed. 

He was never lucky.

…

  
The first night out of Gresit, they built a tiny campfire next to the wagon. Trevor went to hunt, and when he returned with two rabbits for their dinner, he found his traveling companions chatting around a merry fire and tending a bubbling pot containing some tuber Trevor only recognized as a weed.

“How sharp can you make it?” Alucard was asking.

Trevor sat down across from them to skin his catch.

“Very sharp!” They were bent over an icicle, which flattened as he watched it out of the corner of his eye.

“Really, it’s—” Alucard reached out a finger to test its edge.

“No, don’t!”

Trevor saw him jerk his hand back and stick the finger in his mouth to suck it—which he wanted to put down to some sick vampire thing until he remembered that he did that, too. He couldn’t see Alucard’s blood in the dark.

“I am so sorry; you said make it sharp.”

“My fault. It’s stopped bleeding already.”

Sypha spared him a wave at last. “Hello, Trevor! What did you get?”

He held up the two bloody bunnies and expected her to wrinkle her nose, but instead she clapped her hands in delight. “Excellent! Alucard knows about all of the plants here.” She pointed at the pot. “The Speakers call these spring parsnips, but we don’t know how to find them this early in the year. Between the two of you, we will have an excellent soup.” 

Trevor gestured towards her icicle with his skinning knife. “You use those to fight?”

Sypha nodded. “Or cut meat or sew torn clothes...”

“Could you make one fine enough for a surgical instrument?” Alucard asked.

“You mean dentistry?”

“Among other things. Could you?”

“Well…” Sypha considered. “Perhaps. It doesn’t last long if you want it to stay sharp, though. I have to keep my focus on it to keep it frozen. If not, you put your hand on something that thin and it will melt before cutting.” 

“Fascinating.”

“Yes, maybe you could get a vampire to sit still for long enough to take its fangs out,” Trevor put in, irritated less at Sypha than at Alucard’s overplaying his interest. “Perhaps we’ll run into one with a cavity.”

Alucard stuck his nose in the air as if he smelled something bad, but Sypha wasn’t above giving him a piece of her mind. “Ugh—you! Not everything is fighting and stabbing, you know!”

“No, but without those of us who fight and stab, the rest of you wouldn’t get far. Wallachia isn’t exactly in the middle of a renaissance, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“He is a ray of sunshine,” she told Alucard. 

“A ray of sunshine that brought you dinner.” Trevor dumped the meat into the pot and rummaged for a rag to clean his blade.

“Wallachia is not without its beauty,” Sypha said. 

She sounded less angry than before, more thoughtful, so Trevor decided it was all right if he pushed a little further. “Yes, the mountains are very pretty to look at while the villagers are chasing you with pitchforks.”

Alucard snorted in amusement, but by the time Trevor looked at him his face was composed in that same look of disdain. He was checking his fingernails critically as if he could examine them for dirt in the dark. Trevor needed to clean his own hands soon.

“No,” Sypha contended, cupping her hands around some kind of magic. “There is real beauty here, even in simple things, if you look. I will show you. What is your favorite animal, Trevor Belmont?”

“Rabbit is reliably delicious.”

“That is NOT what I meant! When you were a child—what sugar animal would you have chosen at the fair?”

“My family is descended from a 400-year-old line of vampire hunters. We didn’t go to the fair.”

“Will you stop being so sour and answer the lady’s question?”

“Fine. A cat. I suppose.”

“There, that wasn’t so hard!” Sypha concentrated for a moment, then held out her hand to him. In her palm, glowing with its own light, was the perfect figure of a cat, filigreed from ice, crouched and stalking. 

“That’s….” _a bit of delicacy and beauty in a dark world, and she’s giving it to you for free,_ his mind supplied. _Turn off the asshole for five seconds_. “...very lovely, Sypha.” He took it from her. It was made of ice, so the blood on his hand didn’t taint the sheen. “Thank you.”

“It will melt,” she said.

“And so with all things of beauty.” 

“Trevor,” she tsked. “Don’t worry. I will make you another one.”

She was still pretty, and pretty things were vulnerable, and vulnerable was dangerous. But he had to hand it to her, she could make a damn beautiful ice sculpture.

“Now you!” she said to Alucard.

“What about a bat or a rat?” Trevor suggested nastily.

“Rude again!”

Alucard ignored him as if he were above the taunting, which got under Trevor’s skin far more than his insults. He addressed Sypha instead. “I think I would like… a wolf.”

“I can do that!” She concentrated for a moment, tongue poked through her teeth, the fingers of one hand working in the palm of the other. The glow of her magic lit up her face, everything else fading quickly into darkness. “And...here.” She offered it to Alucard with a triumphant flourish.

The dhampir just looked at it. “That is…”

“Huh,” Trevor said, “You almost made it look like it’s not a bloodthirsty monster.”

They both rolled their eyes at him and groaned, but he’d meant it as a compliment. A sincere one.

He washed his hands clean and they served each other dinner as if none of them were bloodthirsty monsters.


	2. Chapter 2

And then they were ambushed just outside of Arges and Trevor realized, all in one moment of action, that he had been spectacularly wrong about his role as the group’s protector.

He already knew Alucard was good in combat; the man had managed to avoid getting killed when Trevor himself had almost really been trying to kill him. It was that disappearing thing that he did, moving faster than humanly possible and just sort of...skidding sideways through space. Nothing could hit him. That, and the floating sword that changed direction at his will, meaning he really didn’t have a maximum striking distance. 

But Sypha… He and Alucard, they fought. They hit things very well. Sypha, he learned at Arges, could bend the world itself to her will. This wasn’t just some ice walls; she stopped fire in mid-air and turned it against its wielder. She blew up drakes from the inside. “You think too much,” he had accused her that morning, “And you talk twice as much as you think.” Really, though, if she could imagine something she could do it, quick as the speed of thought.

Alucard and Trevor took down the first several monsters, and then she made all the rest of them explode.

That night outside of Arges, Trevor Belmont realized that the son of Dracula really did have his back. And Sypha Belnades...well, he’d follow her anywhere. 

He didn’t know it yet. He only knew that the fury that had been brewing in him ever since he’d been dragged on this adventure had tempered into something different. Something like purpose. 

So even though Trevor still didn’t think they’d live through the ordeal, he offered the two of them everything he had. He offered himself, which was...not bad, if profoundly fucked in the luck department. And he offered the thing that both of them really wanted: deep and arcane magical knowledge. 

Somebody might as well get some use out of it. 

…

Days later in the Belmont library, Sypha wore herself out making use of it. Trevor was tired, too, but he was tired because he was fucking bored, staring at a candle while the other two read. When she walked through the little camp he’d made in one of the stacks, she looked...down. Smaller, somehow. So he did something he never would have done two days before. “Are you okay?” he asked. And she did something completely unprecedented. She told him how she felt. And he thought...maybe...God, it didn’t speak well of her judgment...that she liked him. She saw him exactly as he was, and she sat down next to him anyway.

And then she fell asleep on him. It was truly impressive—one moment she was telling him earnestly that she was the expert on his feelings, and the next she was out cold, wheezing in a quiet way that wasn’t quite a snore.  _ Typical, Sypha _ , he’d thought. She’d made him think things and then all of a sudden left him alone with his thoughts—and somehow she’d also arranged it so that he was stuck in one place; he couldn’t even pace. Annoying. Well...no, but demanding, anyway. 

Was he what she said? Was he always sad? He liked to think of himself as a pragmatist, and if the world was a steaming pile of donkey shit, well, that wasn’t his emotional state; it was a fact. Nobody would be particularly giddy confronting a place like that. 

Trevor sighed. Sypha’s head slipped a little. He eased his arm around her to give her a more secure resting spot, and she murmured something and settled against him, twisting so that her knee dug uncomfortably into his thigh. 

She’d made him think about sadness, but strangely, he didn’t feel sad. For once he felt...What? Not lonely, that was it.

Her head lay heavy and loose on his shoulder; if he moved too suddenly, he had the notion that it would roll right off her neck. Her lips parted slightly and she took a slow breath through her mouth, to every appearance completely comfortable on the stone floor. Her weight on his arm felt impossibly precious, as if he were holding a chick or a new calf, or...well, wasn’t everything alive fragile and miraculous, when you came right down to it? He held as still as he could and tried not to ruin things. 

His mother had called these golden moments. Nobody was ever lonely in this house, he’d told Sypha—just being here, thinking about his past, made him lower his guard. Most of his golden moments involved his family, and all of them were tinged with the bitterness of loss. But this… he was likely to be dead before he had the leisure to feel another loss, so he hardly had anything to lose. In the meantime, he’d just sit here for a while and be happy.

So there, Sypha. You were wrong about me. 

Eventually, though, his ass fell asleep and he had to move. He eased his half of the blanket onto the ground and laid Sypha on it. She blinked at him and he said, “Go back to sleep,” and she closed her eyes again. 

Stretching his back, he went to find some trouble. 

Trouble was looking through books in his usual annoyingly methodical way. One stack on his left, another on his right, spending exactly ten seconds on each page. He looked up as Trevor approached. “What?” 

“Just keeping the circulation going. Don’t get too excited about it.” 

“Belmont, nothing you have excites me.” 

“Oh? You seemed awfully bothered about the trophy case earlier.” 

And there was that expression again, as if Alucard would prefer not to grace him with his disgust. “Do you want anything particular, or are you merely here to distract me from my research because you want all three of us to die and prove you right?” 

_ I’m poking at you _ , Trevor thought,  _ because I’m bored and I don’t like to feel useless _ . “Dracula doesn’t need my help to kill us,” he said out loud. “Give me a book; I’ll look for something about a bloody castle.” 

Alucard thumbed four books down in his stack before he handed one to Trevor. 

It had been a while since he’d tried to read anything longer than a letter in depth, but he’d always been a skimmer, anyway. He started at the beginning and flipped through. 

Two minutes in he was frowning at the page. He recognized the letters, even the words...it  _ should _ make sense… “I can’t make up or down of this gibberish,” he admitted. 

Alucard glanced over. “Pity. That one’s in Romanian, too. Are you sure you can read?” 

Trevor grunted and went back to the book. He didn’t know what a homunculoskeptic was, and he didn’t care. What was this book called, again? 

“All of those vampires were killed because they attacked my family,” Trevor said. 

Alucard said nothing. 

“Those skulls? Killed in self-defense or defense of others.” 

Very slowly, the dhampir raised his eyes to meet Trevor’s. “How do you know that?” 

He snorted. “How do I know that a creature brought back from the dead by the powers of hell, one that feeds on human beings, was the aggressor?” 

Alucard marked his place in his book with a finger and took the bait. “Vampires are not in service to the powers of hell. They are in service to nobody but themselves.” His mouth straightened into an unhappy line and he added pointedly, “Like people.” 

“Please, Alucard, I’ve fought them before. Everyone knows they care nothing for the people they hurt.” 

“Oh, yes. And everyone knows that Speaker magicians call on demons to perform their witchcraft. And everyone knows that Belmonts practice black magic.” 

Trevor’s hand tightened reflexively, but he couldn’t make a fist because he was still holding that stupid book. “Vampires treat humans like prey or livestock. And that’s if we’re lucky.” 

“And how do humans treat other animals?” 

“The fuck did you just say to me?” 

Alucard blinked twice and then the disaffected expression slid onto his face again. “It’s no matter. Only I’m not the one they called the Hunter.” He looked back to his reading. “You should go to sleep, Trevor.”

Who the fuck did this fancy, half-vampire ass think he was, implying anything about Trevor’s people? 

_ You want people to treat you like a human being?  _ He could remember Sypha saying this vividly because it had happened only three hours ago and she’d had his ear in a pincer-grip at the time.  _ You first.  _

“No.” Trevor frowned. “We’re all in this shitstorm. I’ll just skim for the word ‘castle.’ Or palace or fortress or whatever.” 

“Synonyms,” Alucard supplied absently. 

“I know what a synonym is!” 

Trevor looked down at the book and wondered what the fuck a “rebis” was, though.


	3. Chapter 3

Trevor was spitting blood long before they got to Dracula’s castle. Alucard, who had dipped his toes in the fight at the Belmont Hold, looked to be in perfect health; he’d always been their strongest chance at getting to Dracula and cutting off his head. 

...If he was really up to killing dear old dad. Otherwise this was going to be a very short fight.

Sypha, for her part, had dragged a magical castle the likes of which had never been seen before across an entire country, and when it had fought against her, she’d leashed it like a disobedient puppy. Alucard said she’d broken a sweat, but Trevor hadn’t seen it.

They stepped out of the hold under the light of a blood moon. Trevor regarded his party: three vampire hunters, as equipped and as honed as they came. Well, he thought for the fiftieth time, they would probably die, but this was the best chance anyone had against that genocidal bastard, so they might as well take it.

“I’ll protect you for as long as I can,” he had told Sypha not an hour ago.

“I know,” she’d said, waving a hand at him as if to say  _ don’t waste my time with things we both already understand.  _

It echoed in his head now: I’ll protect you as long as I can. I know. 

  
...

Trevor counted as they entered the main hall of Dracula’s castle. One two three… twenty-one vampires, to the three of them. They’d have to thin them out fast, then make some kind of tunnel to bring them one at a time. His hand found the whip at his waist. “I terrify them, Sypha disorients them, Alucard goes over the top, and we support him.” 

“Yes.” 

“Begin,” Alucard said. 

And thus began the closest thing to a religious experience of Trevor’s life. 

The Morning Star folded itself into his hands like heated gold. He’d trained since before he could remember for this; he was made for this. He took aim at a leaping footsoldier, let the whip crack like a flyswatter, and watched the man explode in mid-air, taking his companions to the ground as he died. 

Good. Now they’d subdued the threat above them, and he had only to worry about the one in front of him. Which was….ten—no, eleven—hostiles. Well, this would be fun. He worked through the middle, stepping in a dance that Belmonts had choreographed for generations, sliding his body into the whip, wrapping its chain around him, knowing without thinking just how long it needed to be to reach its target, killing opponent after opponent with efficient grace.

Just as the remaining vampires reached him, the whole periphery of the room lit up. Good old Sypha, with a tunnel of flames. She wrapped it in front of him, too, protecting him from monsters, and he took a moment to breathe. 

There was their wall. Alucard went over the top without wasting a single second. 

He jumped in a beautiful arc, and that damn wolf thing he did was kind of scary, though Trevor never planned to admit either to him. But then he turned around, the dolt, and started fighting all the soldiers he'd just leapt over.  _ No, you idiot _ , Trevor thought,  _ leave the mop-up to us. If you slow down now we’ll never get to Dracula.  _

But Alucard didn’t seem to slow down much. 

He, Trevor, was trained in military tactics and they were not.  _ Draw them _ , he wanted to tell Sypha.  _ Get them off of him and bring them to us so that he can keep going. _

She dropped the wall of fire. 

In an instant, Dracula’s generals converged on them. Trevor caught Sypha’s eye and she held his gaze and they both smiled, and he had a friend at his side and a good weapon in his hand and he was fighting vampires. 

...   
  


Later he would remember only pieces of it; that was always the way with battles. Alucard’s head hitting the grate of the fireplace. Sypha facing Dracula alone when he got knocked down. The first time he got hit hard enough to make the world waver before his eyes, standing up sideways, seeing double. Always, always knowing exactly where that immortal, soulsucking leech was, how close his friends stood, the best way to put himself between Dracula and them.

Then Sypha lit up the room and it was burning and his family—no, his friends—were trapped inside with something he couldn’t save them from. They lost sight of Alucard. Damn it, he couldn’t help them if they insisted on going in two directions at once, and Dracula was too strong for him. 

_ You’re not the strongest one here _ , he reminded himself. 

When he saw the vampire’s corpse reaching towards Alucard and his friend with blood dripping down his hand, Trevor acted on the instinct that had been drilled into him since he was born: Protect them. Eliminate the threat without a second thought. He struck Dracula’s head clean off his shoulders. 

And all at once their lives were no longer forfeit. He felt himself drawing a breath for the first time in hours. 

These two were going to give him a stroke. 

They watched Dracula become a thousand devils, then watched until he burned to a mere cinder, then watched more until the cinder fizzled out in a last curl of smoke, leaving behind: a hole, a ring.

It was fucking sad, is what. 

Nobody was bleeding much, so they mopped up the castle first, or they...tried to. Not a single beast left in it. Maybe they had missed some, but if so those creatures had all fled to the woods with the loss of their master or the chaos of the fight before. They walked through the front hallway, ready for the next threat, which kept not coming. What next? What next? 

Alucard looked around, and Trevor might never have realized that he was surveying the wrecked remains of his childhood home if they hadn’t just been in his own wrecked home. He had the decency to look away. 

Sypha didn’t understand space, though, so she wrapped her arm around Alucard. He let it stay. Trevor… Trevor thought they were leaving their backs a little too exposed. He’d start by securing the main hall, then work outwards from there. He turned to the door, just to double check. Better do a quick sweep of the ceiling, too; not many holes in the floor in here, but you never know what’s hiding above you… 

Sypha grabbed him by the hand and held on, and it was...nice. It was nice to see the sun rise with them. Her hand in Trevor’s and her arm around Alucard’s back, because he looked like he was about to fall down. 

Alucard stood stiff as if Sypha’s touch might break him, or as if he were afraid she’d let go. Trevor kept his hand in hers, but he could see the other man’s pained stance even from the corner of his eye. Alucard was hurt. 

Or something was wrong with him, anyway, though Trevor doubted he’d admit it if left to his own devices. “Thought vampires were supposed to be tough,” Trevor taunted him, trying to make things seem normal. “Where’d you get hit?” 

“I’m not a vampire.” 

“Whatever, then.” 

“I didn’t get hurt.” 

“Nonsense. I’ve seen a man walk around with internal bleeding before. Looked just like you.” 

Alucard looked up with an annoyed glint in his eye, but some real, more dangerous emotion brewed just beneath that. Good. Sypha complained that she couldn’t get a reaction from him, but Trevor knew that he rankled their companion on a very basic level--and wasn’t annoyance some kind of emotion, after all? Trevor would irritate him until he had to feel something, until he was back with them again. 

Sypha picked up on his game. “This man you saw—he wore pants like Alucard’s? And the pretty shirt that is cut down to—” she gestured at his chest. 

“Are you helping?” Alucard asked her. 

“Well, not exactly like that.” Trevor conceded.

“It’s not internal bleeding. I am uninjured. But you—” he turned to his companions, drawn back into the concerns of the present moment. “You are both mortal. And...injured?” 

“Not badly.” Sypha showed her shoulder, a mass of red welts and blisters, and they both winced. “Trevor?” 

“I’m...uhm...fine. Mostly.” He waved his right hand, purple and twice the size it should be, not to mention caked with blood. 

“That looks broken,” Alucard said. 

“Belmont bones don’t break easily.” 

“No, I’ve seen that sort of injury before. It’s broken,” Sypha pronounced. 

“Will you stop? It’s just bruised. Whose side are you on?” 

“Ours.” She grinned, unrepentant. 

“We have a machine that will tell how badly it is hurt,” Alucard told him. “...If it wasn’t smashed to pieces in the battle.” 

“Christ on a stick, Sypha, couldn’t you have moved the castle a little more gently? You broke everything.” 

“Shut up. You broke your own staircase.” 

Trevor didn’t see why they needed to know which bones were broken—it would heal the same either way—but Alucard said it wouldn’t, and after some sort of fancy science that Trevor wasn’t convinced actually did anything, the dhampir took the bones of three of his fingers and manipulated them back into place—Pop. Pop. Pop. The last one hurt the worst because he saw it coming. 

“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Sypha told him, but she took his large hand in both of her tiny ones very gently, and then he felt a flood like a warm bath over it and the pain receded. “There. That will start it healing. When did this happen?” 

Trevor shrugged. “I’m not surprised you didn’t see it. You hit the floor and were out.” 

“And then Dracula… injured your hand?” 

“How did he injure it exactly?” 

Trevor hung his head. He didn’t need to see Alucard to know that his eyebrows were raised in that mocking look. 

“Did you break your hand punching Dracula in the face?” 

“Stopped him, didn’t I?” 

“After he knocked me down?” Sypha clapped her hands in glee. “Trevor, did you punch Dracula for me?” 

He cleared his throat, changing the subject. “Your shoulder—those burns look bad. Black magic?” 

“No.” She waved her hand dismissively a few times, unconcerned. “ _ My _ magic. Those marks are my fingers.” 

“He cut you; I saw it.” 

“And then I burned it shut. Shows him.” 

Both of the men winced. 

“There’s no more skin on these burned strips,” Alucard told her with a frown. “I can give you something that will help it heal quickly, but you’ll have to keep a watertight salve on it, and probably a bandage, or it will get infected.” 

She nodded.

“And you’ll need to—” he gestured politely at her neck.

“What?” 

“I can’t treat what I can’t fully see.” 

“Oh. Yes.” She pulled the cloak over her head without undoing the clasp, and Trevor was just thinking that he hadn’t seen her without the heavy cowl, that she was even thinner than he expected and not quite as short, when she brought her hand to the nape of her neck and untied the collar of her tabard with one tug. 

“Uhm—Sypha—” he made a lunge at her, trying to catch it before the whole thing fell off, but he only ended up groping her as she pinned the garment under her arm. 

“I’ve got it.” She was laughing at him again. Great. They both were. And Alucard was going to touch her shoulder, of course, so he, Trevor, should probably get his hand off of her breast. 

“I’ve got to touch it to put the salve on,” Alucard apologized. “It’s going to hurt.” 

Sypha gave him another look with those big, soulful eyes, like she saw right through to your every insecurity. And, Trevor supposed, she actually did. “I’m not the one that’s hurt,” she said. 

Alucard ignored her implications. Even to Trevor’s eyes, he daubed medicine on her shoulder with painstaking gentleness. 

“OW!” She yelped so loudly that Trevor jumped around to look for the new threat, then she smacked her doctor’s arm reflexively. “That HURTS!”    


  
… 

  
  
“Up here your father’s collected knowledge, down there the collected knowledge of your mother’s people.” 

Trevor knew exactly what he was giving to Alucard, and he supposed it was a lot better than living death. He also knew what he was offering Sypha, though. “The greatest library in Europe,” she’d called his home.  _ You weren’t interested in me until you saw my books _ , he thought, half grousing and half laughing at himself, though it wasn’t entirely a joke. And Dracula’s library—well, Alucard’s now, he supposed—was about ten times as large as the Belmont collection. The bastard had probably read them all, too, unlike Trevor. 

Sypha would doubtless stay here, at least for a while. Everything she could want was here. Well, except for her family, of course. But this...he remembered her thumbing through those books like she wanted to eat them. This was what she loved. 

“So what...do we do now?” she asked softly. 

Alucard looked at his feet, considering the question carefully. “I’ll cook you breakfast,” he said. 


	4. Chapter 4

How did you have a normal day after that week of terror and battle? 

You didn’t, apparently. You slugged around more exhausted than you could have imagined and you looked up and it was sunset only an instant after dawn. You went back to the Belmont Hold because that’s where you felt safe, and you spent another night on the stone floor. Then you woke the next morning feeling like somebody had cooked you the day before and thrown you into a pot to warm up as leftovers today. 

Vampire bodies disintegrated upon death, but their skeletons apparently did not. Morbid as it was, the polished bone wouldn’t attract wild animals. None of them so much as thought about cleaning up the remains of the battle, much less the broken glass. “I want to see what is in this castle,” Sypha yawned. “But not today.” 

Dinner was the only normal part of the days that followed Dracula’s death, and its very domesticity made it seem like a bizarre world outside of time. They didn’t eat the first day, and they didn’t plan anything at all the second, so when Trevor started to get hungry, he went into the woods and came back with a wild pig, which he roasted over a campfire in the castle’s hearth. 

Alucard took one look at his handiwork and sniffed in disdain. “You build a fire like a Moldavian.” It was the smell of cooking pork that had brought him in the first place, though, so he could fuck right off or he could be nice and get something to eat. 

He returned with wine from the cellar, which Trevor supposed was nice enough to merit some roasted meat.

The pig wasn’t done until nearly midnight, at which time they had all filled their mouths with husked, toasted wheat in an effort not to starve. Trevor looked at both of their faces in the firelight, so much like camping, and found everything that the fire lit up most satisfactory. But the vast echo chamber of the castle faded into darkness just beyond their circle. This was not his house; this was the enemy’s house, and nighttime still brought the threat of monsters. 

The next day, Sypha made something in a big pot, which was tasty, if mushy. 

And the day after that, Alucard cooked fish which was… the most fucking delicious thing Trevor had ever eaten in his life. “Not too bad for someone who eats raw deer carcasses,” he complimented. 

“Belmont, I’d say you were raised in a barn, but I don’t want to insult barns in such a manner,” Alucard shot back. 

Sypha punched Trevor in the arm—his hurt arm. “This is delicious,” she said. 

“See?” Alucard raised his eyebrows across the table at Trevor. “SHE knows how to be nice.” 

“Does she?” Trevor rubbed his arm through the bandage.

...

The next day Sypha walked him out to the cliffs, put her head on his shoulder, and asked him to leave with her. “Listen to what I am saying—I want you to be with me. And I want you to have adventures with me.” 

He thought again about how false happy endings were, as if life could stand still in a joyful moment, as if anything ever really ended. Sypha looked at him expectantly. Y _ ou are happy right now, _ he told himself.  _ And you’re going to be happy again tomorrow. Don’t fuck it up _ . “I wouldn’t know where else to go,” he said. “Or who else to be with.” 

Some day in the future, when they meet up with Sypha’s grandfather again, the old man will look him square in the eyes and say, “You love her.” 

“She’s my best friend and my strongest ally,” Trevor will respond in perfect agreement. 

That was how he felt that evening, for the first time, with Sypha’s head on his shoulder and her arms wrapped around his. He was watching the sun turn the valley to gold with his best friend. 

They got a bit more pragmatic on the way back to the castle. “You don’t want to stay here with all of those books and with...with him?” Trevor asked. “You’re sure? He probably has at least as much crap memorized as you do; the two of you could tell each other stories for months.” 

Sypha shook her head sadly, “I can’t give him what he won’t take, Trevor.” 

“Oh, I’m sure he’d sleep with you if you offered.” 

The moment it came out of his mouth he realized it was mean rather than funny, but Sypha weighed his comment like a serious philosophical issue. “I’m not so sure he would! But that is not what I mean. He wants friendship desperately, but even when it is right in front of him...he won’t take it. Not yet. He needs...something else, to make it all right, first. I don’t know what it is. Time, perhaps. But I can’t fix him.” 

“You can fix me, though?” 

She grinned wickedly at him. “ _ You _ still function. You just look very rough.” 

“Thanks.” 

She stretched on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek in the one spot where stubble didn’t grow. “You’re welcome.” 

“He needs a cause,” Trevor thought aloud. He wrapped his arm around Sypha’s waist and she allowed him to pull her close to his side. “Like you said I did. Only his isn’t fighting night creatures. I don’t think he much likes fighting, actually.” 

“You sound surprised.” 

“Well, he picks enough fights.” 

“I think that is mostly you.” 

“Listen—that’s not the point. He needs something to do with his life, and he likes all this knowledge stuff. So…” Trevor shrugged. “Maybe he’ll figure it out here.” 

Sypha pulled away, but when he turned to her, she was grinning at him with delight. “You weren’t just giving him the books! You were trying to give him a life!” 

“Don’t act like I planned it out or something. The books were there, he was there. I just tied up some loose ends.” 

“No, I know you, Trevor Belmont.” She poked a surprisingly sharp finger into his chest. “You big softie.” 

“If you tell anyone, I swear by my ancestors that I will gag you with this whip.” 

“Promise?” 

“Why, Sypha, I thought Speakers were supposed to be studious and mild-mannered.” 

“No you did not.” 

He grinned. 

“I think I would very much like you to kiss me now.” 

He kissed her gently because her lip was still split from the fight, and he was so happy that it felt dangerous. 

…

They did ask Alucard to come with them, but they asked him together. Maybe that made it more difficult for him to accept, knowing that they’d been planning without him. He stared at the both of them for long moments and then said, “No. I thank you for the invitation, but...no, I don’t think so. I don’t belong…” The pause became awkward. 

“But you do—” Sypha began. 

“—on the road,” Alucard finished. “Someone has to stay here. My work is here. I don’t belong on the road.” 

“Nonsense,” Trevor told him. “You belong on the road as much as any of us. You only  _ think  _ you’re allergic to the dirt.” 

For once the dhampir didn’t rise to the bait, and that worried Trevor. “You have things to do out there,” he told Sypha. “You are only just beginning.” 

“You too are only beginning!” 

“Yes, of course.” He folded Sypha’s hands in both of his. 

“Only for a few months,” she promised. “We will see what help we can be at Braila, we will find my people, and then we’ll come back. It is what Speakers do. We wander the same routes when we know people might need us.” 

Alucard looked faintly amused at the idea of needing them, but Trevor knew that was an act because he knew exactly how his companion felt. They had both been alone, and now they were not. So of course he would need them eventually.

“You are not obligated—” Alucard began. 

“Look, Alucard, shut up,” Trevor told him. 

“Yes, do.” Sypha hugged him around his neck. 

When they left the next day, Alucard gave him the finger like it was an old joke, and Trevor rode off laughing, Sypha leaning on his arm. “You know,” he remarked, “I really think we’ve had a good effect on his manners.” 

“Oh yes, we are a gentling influence, the both of us. Especially you, Trevor Belmont.” 

The road was straight here and the horses didn’t need much guidance, so they ambled along, Sypha teasing him because she liked to see him react, Trevor grumbling at her to keep her amused, taking turns driving. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They thought they were doing right by Alucard. They were very wrong, and maybe even selfishly short-sighted, but they did try.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the rating change. This chapter is 95% sex. 
> 
> I'm not super satisfied with it, but staring at it in irritation isn't going to help anything, so here you go. 
> 
> Sypha and Trevor, on the other hand, have a pretty good time.

Unlike his traveling companion, Trevor went into their adventure waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’d known Sypha for long enough (more than five minutes) to realize that she was always confident, but this...this post-Dracula mania was something else.

He wasn’t sure she’d ever been in a battle before he showed up in Gresit, unless you counted the thing with the stone-eyed Cyclops, which he did not because she hadn’t actually put up a fight. But did Sypha take that as defeat? Of course not. On her first quest she’d pulled a giant castle through time and space, then taken on an undead horde and finished off Dracula himself with barely a scratch. She was the scariest person he’d ever met, far more powerful than either Alucard or Trevor himself, though she’d barely begun to realize how she could use those powers, and he wasn’t about to tell her. Still… 

Still… 

She’d gotten a taste of victory—no, she’d gotten a giant victory feast—and she had no idea how hard one night creature could kick her ass on an off day. She was high on winning and chasing the next high, and sooner or later she was going to get knocked down.

Trevor did not want to be there when that happened, but he would be damned if he let her go into it without backup. So here they were, on Sypha’s adventure. He should probably worry more, but for now he was having a pretty good time.

That first day when they set out in the wagon, he just let himself enjoy her antics, a pleasant tingle of anticipation sitting low in his stomach. He was free from the solitude that had made him cranky for so long, and Sypha was free to roam the countryside. And tease him about his driving, and shift on the seat until her thigh was pressed against his, and lean her head on his arm, and turn her face to take a playful nip at his shoulder when she was pretending to be angry. It was a fairly brazen attempt at flirting, really.

They hadn’t slept together—well, beyond the occasional actual sleeping, that was. At most, they’d gotten in a little petting, and a few times when he’d had stubble, he’d buried his face in her neck to listen to her squeal an indignant protest. She’d made her intentions clear, though, and he’d let her know that he was more than amenable. Their relationship wasn’t really a matter of _what_ but of _when_. And of course, of _how long can Trevor go without fucking this up_.

Just past mid-afternoon, Sypha gestured towards the woods. “Let’s make camp here for the night.”

“Really?” Trevor asked. “We’ve still got three hours of daylight left.”

“Mmnn,” she considered, pulling the horses off the road and onto a small side-path. “This is a good place, with the little stream next to it. And if we stop now, we’ll be in bed before it gets cold.”

“We don’t have a bed.”

“We have blankets.”

“I can keep you warm.”

“You may keep me warm,” she said promptly, flicking the reins. 

“Are you correcting my grammar again?”

“No.”

He thought about that for a moment as she drove into a small field next to the stream. “Oh.” When he looked back at her again, she was laughing at him. “What?”

“You have such a look on your face.”

“Just to be clear, what you said meant…?” 

“I am taking you to bed, Trevor Belmont. Was I subtle?” She leaned her head to one side and regarded him through heavy lids. “...Unless you just want to eat dried goat meat and go to sleep, which is also fine.”

“Goat meat is not what I want to eat.”

“That can be arranged,” Sypha told him in a knowing sing-song. She pulled their thankfully placid horses to a halt and placed the reins on the bench next to her, then she hiked up her skirt far enough to afford her some movement, climbed onto his lap, and straddled him so abruptly that he was left with his mouth hanging open, trying to figure out what to say. “There, that’s nicer,” she said. 

He’d been propositioned openly before, but never as if it were the most natural and innocent act in the world, and apparently (this was a day of firsts), he was incredibly hot for that. His hands went to her sides automatically to steady her, fingers splayed over thin ribs. Sypha huffed a quick breath onto his face.

“What was that?” he asked. She pressed her lips together and said nothing. “Sypha Belnades, are you ticklish?”

“If you tickle me, I am not going to have sex with you.” Stubborn. She was cute when she was stubborn, particularly when he had the upper hand.

He stole a quick kiss. “Understood.” And another. “I wanted it noted in the records how well I am restraining myself from tickling you.”

Her hands framed his face. “What records?”

“Please, Sypha, you keep records of everything that happens.”

“I never kiss and tell.” She ran her thumb over his lower lip and a little thrill burned under his skin wherever she touched, anticipation as much as arousal. Trevor recovered enough presence of mind to catch the pad of her finger between his teeth and fret it playfully, and Sypha’s face broke into a languid, happy smile all at odds with her usual pert, happy smile. He tried not to think about how much he liked that, how much she’d let her guard down around him—or maybe how little guard she’d had in the first place. 

And then she kissed him in earnest.

Trevor had been the eager recipient of a few full-body kisses in his time, most of them given drunkenly against a tavern wall. Not one of those others had treated foreplay as if it were an art form. Sypha leaned in, she angled her head, and he tasted lips and tongue and the winterberries she’d been eating. He had to brace with his abdomen to keep her from bowling him over the back of the bench, which was...good. It made him concentrate on something other than all the places their bodies were touching, which already had the blood pooling between his legs. Then she rolled her hips against him and twined her hands into his hair, the slow rock of her body matching their easy, unhurried kisses, and he wanted nothing more than her on top of him in the bed of the wagon.

Instead, he wrapped his arm around her back and pulled her tight against him. His hand grazed her jawline on its way to her hair and he was rewarded with a breathy, pretty moan. So she had a bit of a sweet spot, did she? Well, that was worth exploring further.

Finally she broke away from kissing him into slow asphyxiation to declare, “Horses.”

“What?” His eyes focused on her lips, pink and plump. He may have nipped them a little with his teeth, but she hadn’t seemed to mind—far from it.

“The horses. We should unhitch them and feed them and make camp before anything else.”

“Oh.” Belatedly, he registered that they were still on the wagon, simply parked in the little clearing. “Right. First, though...” He pulled her down so he could reach that place where her jaw met her neck, the one that had gotten such a reaction, and put his mouth to it.

The sound she made was halfway between a moan and a warning— “Trevorrr,” with that burred ‘r’ at the end, and he didn’t think he’d ever gotten half-hard from hearing a woman say his name before, at least not while both of their clothes were still on. Sypha pulled him away with a cautioning finger against his lips. “Wait.” They sat, breathing raggedly, her weight still straddling his hips. “We have time. I want us to have time.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “Horses.” 

With great effort, they disentangled themselves, and after that, they made quick work of the camp. Trevor unhitched and curried while Sypha found good grass for the animals to eat. He led them down to the stream to drink and took the opportunity to wash his face and anything else he could reach while she puttered around the wagon, finding their tin cups, rummaging for the picnic dinner Alucard had packed for them. He should...probably take his washing a bit seriously. Trevor unwound the bandage from his arm and tested it—mostly healed already with good medicine and good magic, but he’d bind it again in the morning all the same, for the extra bracing. His vest and shirt went next, and he splashed himself, and it was...cold. Well, new snow melt was certainly a way to teach a man a little patience. He shook himself dry and caught Sypha watching out of the corner of his eye, though when he turned to her she pretended she wasn’t. So he just watched her blatantly for long moments while she collected firewood with controlled gusts of wind from her hands; apparently bending down to pick up sticks was beneath her.

Something about one of those gestures—a little poof with a flicked wrist while she splayed out one leg and leaned back on the other—looked a lot like her battle moves. It caught his attention because...because it was choreographed, he realized. She knew exactly what she was doing, back straight, ass stuck out at a provocative angle. She was putting on a show for him.

Trevor ran his hand over his face so she didn’t see his smile. “Do you want to keep dancing over there, or would you like a partner?”

“I think we have enough wood for a fire now, no thanks to you, layabout.”

“I just thought you might want me to, you know, clean up a bit. Since the blankets have been properly laundered.” _I just want to do this right_ , he did not say.

She came to him then, and Sypha did not usually roll her hips quite that much when she walked, like she was stalking prey. “Thoughtful of you. Though…” She regarded him, contemplating.

“What?” This was a new sensation, being eyed like a piece of meat. He wasn’t sure whether the experience was amusing or unsettling.

“Hmm…” She reached out for him, fingers running first up his arm to his shoulder (a pleasant hum against his skin) and then halfway down his chest (a sharp pang of desire, and then the ache of regret when she went no further). “I wanted to take your shirt off.” She pouted.

 _Calm down_ , he told himself. _They’re just fingertips, and it’s just your chest_. “I can put it on again,” he offered.

“No.” She took back her hand and Trevor bit back his sense of loss. But then she tossed a naughty look his way, peeling off her black arm guards in two deliberate motions. “I’ll do it next time.”

_Next time._

Just before she dipped her hands and face in the water, she told him, “Don’t dunk me.”

He shook his head, a solemn promise. “Don’t get your bandage wet; your shoulder’s almost healed.”

She paused as if caught off-guard and turned her head to look at him.

“What?”

“Sometimes you are surprisingly thoughtful, that’s all.”

He snorted in disbelief, trying to sound skeptical instead of pleased, while Sypha splashed her arms and her neck and a good part of her hair and shrieked, “Oh, that is FREEZING!”

They found the horses food and even managed to finish their camp before they touched each other again. But the second their chores were done, Sypha pulled him around the back of the wagon as if there were anybody else here to see them petting and necking like naughty children, and they just...made out. The pleasant buzz of anticipation that had occupied Trevor all day grew into full desire, then curled low in his abdomen, willing to wait on the long game. At some point he surfaced from her lips and neck and ear enough to realize that his palm was doing a dance up her back—there, smooth skin warm from the sun, and there, when he ran it down again, the rough cloth of her dress.

He let his good hand linger on a bare shoulder. “You know, I’m coming around to Speaker clothes.”

She smiled, aroused and amused. “Yes, they are very sexy.”

“Really! This—” he twitched her skirt— “is simple. But this—” he ran fingers down her back, past the sharp line of a shoulder blade— “is my favorite part.”

“That’s my skin, not my clothes.”

“That’s what I like about it. Also—”

He slipped a finger under the sash at her waist and tugged, watching her breath catch. Hah. She wasn’t the only one who could get her partner going. “You know, ever since you took off that cloak, I’ve been wanting to unwind this damn thing.” Then he added, unwisely, “It makes you look like Jesus.”

It was even money whether she’d pretend offense or laugh out loud at him. She laughed. “Do you have a Jesus fetish?”

“NO.”

“Good, because I am not prepared for that kind of roleplay. Wait.”

Hadn’t he been waiting?

She took a step back and her hands moved under her tunic. A moment later she’d unfastened something and the black skirt beneath it fell to the ground, and Christ, she’d got legs.

Of course she had legs; most people had legs. But hers were… _Bare_ , his helpful mind supplied. Also, flesh. Piqued at the knee and rounded at the calf, though that was more of an image than an actual thought. _About to be wrapped around you_ , some primal part of him insisted, and that sent yet another jolt straight down to his groin. Much more of this and his pants wouldn’t fit.

“Better,” she said, holding her arms open as if to say “have at it.”

He spent too long fumbling with the knot at her belt before he got it undone and the whole thing just sort of fell to the ground—not as much like unwrapping a present as he’d hoped. For a moment she looked strangely vulnerable in a way that belied everything she’d done all afternoon, the dress hanging loosely and her arms wrapped around herself.

“Trevor,” she said softly.

He put a hand to her hair. “Everything all right?” 

She gestured towards the bandage. “I can’t lift this arm. The skin is still stiff. You’ll have to untie me.”

She turned, and he undid the bow at her neck easily—carefully, because she must have done it one-handed herself this morning, and she’d gotten a piece of hair from her nape caught in the tie—and then she moved her arms and the dress slipped to the ground, and… Oh, Sypha. She was perfect. His brain instinctively registered the curve of her back, the dip of her waist, the swell of her hips, the grace of her. Aside from the faint golden tinge to her skin (he had expected her to be paler), her body was almost not a surprise, as if he’d known forever that he would touch this and lose his sorry self in it and become, for a little while, something better. He’d known that half-smile over her shoulder, though he didn’t expect it to give him that thrill. In scarcely a month he’d learned the way she moved as she turned towards him. New and fascinating were the small, high breasts and the soft curve of her stomach and the darker golden curls where her thighs met.

He swallowed hard.

Sypha tilted her chin up and met his eyes, half-question, half-challenge. She was stark naked, in nothing but her sandals; he was not. Trevor brought his hand up and touched that chin. “You’re beautiful,” he said.

It was so fucking trite, so incomplete. Lots of people were beautiful; Sypha was iron to her core, and he knew damn well what he had, even if he did a shit job of saying so. Her cheeks pinked with pleasure, though, so he supposed he could have done worse.

She took a step in and rested her cheek on his chest. Trevor wrapped his arms around her and dropped his lips to her hair, feeling strangely tender. She kissed the center of his chest almost chastely. 

Then she poked out her tongue and licked a stripe right up his throat to his chin, and her tongue was _hot_ and _wet_ and such a tone change that he shouted in surprise, only to look down and see her giving him that naughty grin. 

Her fingers moved lazily over his abdomen, swipe with the pads over his stomach, then swipe with the backs of her nails. The muscles jumped under her touch. He was fairly certain she could feel other parts of his anatomy jump as well, pressed against her body. She kissed the hollow of his throat, then murmured, “You smell good.”

Aaaand now his pants were definitely too tight, the pleasant discomfort of his erection pressed against her stomach. She had so much skin, so many places to touch, and when he grabbed her ass and pulled her tight against him, hands satisfyingly full, she gave the nicest little yelp.

He grinned at her, unrepentant.

“Oh, is that right?” Her fingers skittered across the front of his pants and then squeezed, and _oh_ Jesus Fuck, she had his cock in her hand and was doing a fair job of rubbing him off right through the cloth.

“I think this is supposed to be the part—” he huffed and lost his thought because she’d found his head and was squeezing, “Nnnnggg… The part where I ask if you’ve done this before. But it seems like you know your way around…”

She cocked her head to the side, considering his girth with her fingers. “I have done this before. Have you?”

He’d meant to laugh, but it just came out as a quick breath. “Yes.”

“Anything else I need to know?”

He tried, coaxing his poor brain, which had practically no blood left in it, to decipher what she meant. “I’m clean,” he offered at last.

“Me, too,” she said, though he hadn’t considered that she might not be. Because she was a woman? Was that unfair of him? “But that’s not what I meant,” she continued. “Anything you like, or don’t like?”

“I like having my cock in your hand,” he managed, and he didn’t have the wits left to be offended when she laughed.

“You’ll like where I put it next even more,” she promised.

“What about you?” he remembered to ask in return. “Anything I need to know?”

She considered. “Don’t finish inside of me.”

He nodded his head tersely, this time catching her meaning perfectly.

“That’s important.”

“I’ll pull out well before,” he promised.

Sypha had been multi-tasking, the buttons of his pants coming loose with a little thrill for what was about to happen next, even as he missed the pressure. When she finally reached into his pants and wrapped her hand around him in a grip that was none too gentle, it felt like heaven and torture at the same time, which was actually a fair description of their entire relationship.

Her eyes widened. She drew him out and her eyes widened a bit more. All right, that was enough to make him nervous. “What?”

“You had better get me VERY relaxed first.”

Was something wrong? “Why?”

“Because you are NOT small, Trevor. And I am, if you’ve noticed, rather small.”

Of course she was, but… Oh. _Oh._ A slow grin spread over his face. “So you’re saying I might be too much man for you?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“No, really, I’ve never had any complaints, but I can see how it might be a lot for you to han—oof!” Her hand clapped over his mouth, the other still clamped tightly around his dick, and the combination should not have felt so exciting. “You hush your mouth or I will cut you right now, Trevor Belmont.”

He licked her palm and she removed the hand on his mouth with a squeal. She hadn’t removed the hand further south, which was now working him with tiny little tugs that she had to know weren’t enough. “Okay,” he said. “But after you cut me, do we still get to have sex?”

“Very. Relaxed,” she said again.

“What if I say ‘yes, my lady, whatever you please?’” 

“Hmm…” She paused to lick her hand while she considered, tongue poking between each set of fingers and mouth swirling around her thumb before she pulled it off with an audible pop, and if Trevor’s erection got any tighter, she’d be able to play him like an instrument. Then she did, actually, bring that slick hand down and grasp him, sliding back and forth and squeezing his tip every time it slid into her fist. He tried not to rut against her hand and failed miserably.

“I’m happy,” he panted, “to give you some attention, but it’s not going to work if...nnnngh,” she’d tucked her fingers against the underside of his cock, “if you rub me off right here.”

She swayed towards him, leaning pert breasts against him, and her eyes were bright and teasing, sharing the joke. “Let’s test that stamina you brag about.” And fuck, he could look straight down her cleavage with her all pressed against him like that, and fuck, she’d shifted her elbow and hadn’t slowed down her grip on him in the slightest. 

Somehow they got into the wagon. Somehow their shoes came off. Trevor knew he’d hurriedly arranged his weapons in the bed next to them while Sypha pulled down blankets like a woman possessed and shoved them into a reasonable pallet. The next thing he knew he was kissing her ankle and breathing against the fine blond hairs on her calf, watching gooseflesh rise on her skin. Her bent knee was the prettiest thing, a delicate point among all those curves, and when he kissed the inside of it, he got a genuine shiver. He tried it again, pressing his lips to her thigh bare centimeters higher. Sypha managed to make a sound that was approving and impatient, both at the same time, and she crooked her leg bossily over his shoulder to draw him upwards.

Well. He’d get there eventually, but first he’d take his time and kiss and nip and lick up every piece of her thigh while she tried not to whimper, because he was an asshole. And he’d grab her rear and use that grip to pull her apart just a little, because she was made out of curves and fresh-milk skin, and he wanted to squeeze whatever he could get his hands on.

Sypha’s legs fell open eagerly, and when he spread her with the tips of his fingers to get a good look and think strategy, she let out a little moan and shivered like a colt. He decided she’d waited enough and just licked a crooked stripe from bottom to top, listening and feeling to see what she liked. She tasted like sex and she smelled like sex, and the muscles of her legs went tight with the first swipe of his tongue. “Oh, fuck, yes.” Fingers wound in his hair and tugged. He licked again, up the side, and again, tongue rough and vague over her clit, and found it wasn’t hard at all to wind her up like a watch until she was singing at every pass— “Trevor, oooooh God’s name, like that. Yes! Nn, no, to the side. Yes, there! Oh fuck me, I want your cock inside me.” It really should not have come as a surprise that Sypha enjoyed dirty talk—particularly when she was the one talking.

“I want you inside me,” she’d said, but she’d also said, “relax me,” and right now she was as tense as he’d ever seen a woman, hips coming off the pallet and heel digging into his back where she’d flung her leg over his shoulder. He was so hard his cock had probably gone purple. God, he’d slide into her once and have to pull out and come immediately if he kept this up. He rolled his hips against the blankets, hoping for some kind relief, but Sypha kept moaning and tightening and canting her hips towards him, and his chin was covered with her arousal, and it wasn’t like any sane man could fail to react…

...Her breath came in quick little gasps. _So close_ , he thought. _Stay with me_. He fretted her clit with his tongue and pressed an experimental finger to her entrance, and she keened, desperate. Ah, there was the key. He pressed two fingers deep and she came on a high, tight shout, muscles clenching in the rolling rhythm of a woman who had been thoroughly satisfied.

When she stopped gasping and her hips eased onto the blankets, he raised himself on one elbow to look at her. Sypha brought a hand down between her legs and placed it over his, the message clear—leave those inside me. She’d raised herself on her good arm and she smiled down at him, head cocked to the side and eyes bright and open, flushed clear down to her breasts, and it was simultaneously the dirtiest and the purest thing Trevor had ever seen. 

“I’m relaxed,” she whispered, her tone an absurd counterpoint to her earlier shouts.

“I can see that,” he mouthed back.

“Can I roll you over?” Her whisper was a little conspiracy, the two of them secretly pleased with each other despite the rest of the world.

“What?”

She pulled his fingers out of her with a pleased flutter of her eyelids and sat up. “Can I roll you onto your back?” Her fingertips pushed lightly at his chest, a suggestion. “My shoulder—” Oh yes, the bandages. “Can I be on top?”

His back hit the blankets so fast he thought he might have bruised it. “Yes,” he said simply. 

She straddled him, settling herself into place, fist once again clenched on his erection. “I could—” she licked her lips in suggestion— “But I think maybe it is not my mouth that you want right now.” Her hips rolled against the tight line of his cock, and he took a deep, steadying breath, Sypha stretched out like a column above him. He rubbed his thumb on her belly, between navel and those damp, golden curls, simply because he had permission to touch her.

But she was waiting for an answer to her question. “I think it’s your turn to drive,” he said, so she did. She slid against him once or twice, but even if she’d wanted to tease, he was angled just right to slip inside her, and it didn’t take much positioning before she was sinking onto him, stretching around him, exhaling a slow breath. She rocked, holding only the tip of his cock inside of her. And ooooh fuck, surely this was the best torture of his entire life. She worked her way onto him with the steady rocking of her hips, and Christ, she was so hot, so physically hot, like she’d got him clenched inside some slick, wet fire and she was going to melt him, and it didn’t bother him at all that that made no sense.

With a sigh, she sank heavily onto him. Her head tilted back and she rippled around him, tight and sinuous, her body working his. Trevor’s stomach clenched in response, a shiver in his balls and the pulse of his cock inside her, though he was trying not to move, trying to let her take him at her own pace. Her breath caught.

She was getting interested again. She rocked back onto him, eagerly this time, and then again, and he was—What? Sheathed. Hilted. Balls deep in Sypha Belnades, who was shifting her hips in tiny motions even now, and he had never felt anything as subtle or as wet or as good in his entire life.

Her breathing had gone a little shallow, he was gasping like he’d just won a prizefight, and he wanted more than anything to grab her hips and pull her down onto him, hard.

Instead, he clenched his hands on her thighs, willing himself into stillness. “Too much?” he asked, but she just grinned at him. “SO much.” And then she put a hand between them, grasped him at the base, and slid, feeling the stretch of her own body as she came off his cock. The groan that she ripped out of his throat was as involuntary as the way his hips bucked up against hers. “I’ll try not to come again before you do,” she said, “But no promises.” Then she winked at him like the bossy thing she was and rolled her hips against his, and he slid out with the pleasant pang of loss and sank in like he was drowning and oh, Christ in heaven, it felt like sex and absolution and Christmas morning, and he had no idea that he was all but growling until he saw the smug look on her face.

She started slowly, not nearly enough, left him wanting until he couldn’t stand it anymore, until suddenly he was _getting_ what he wanted, snapping his hips up to meet hers with the audible thwap of their bodies meeting. When he needed to go faster still, she stretched out on his chest, lying flat, and made those heavy little gasps in his ear while he moved in her urgently and she gripped him in that warmth that felt like home, home, home.

“Sypha,” he said urgently.

“Mmm.” She nipped at his ear.

“You need to get off.”

“Mmm,” she agreed.

“No, you need to move or I’m going to come inside you.”

She rolled off of him in a flash and just as quickly her hand was there, cupping his balls while he jerked urgently at himself. She pointed imperiously to that area he’d stroked before, just between her navel and her curls, and holy shit, that undid him at last. He could swear that he saw lights, that he felt them in his thighs and clear down to the soles of his feet as he came, gasping and spilling onto her stomach, a lighter cream against the buttermilk cream of her skin. 

She looked at where he’d marked her and ran her hand between her legs, and she was moaning and arching before he could even volunteer to help, before he could do anything more than watch the tense band of muscles in her forearm as she came.

“Hold still,” he said quietly. He found a fine linen napkin in the dinner they’d packed from the castle and wiped her stomach clean, giddy at defiling something he was fairly certain once belonged to Vlad Fucking Tepes himself. Sypha laughed as if she knew what he was thinking, which she probably did, wicked thing that she was.

They ate the picnic lunch and ran their hands over each other with no particular urgency, learning the other’s body. They talked shop— “I’d better sleep on the right. I can grab a weapon faster that way.” “Will you wake if anything decides to attack?” “Yes.” “Grab me hard and I’ll wake right away, but I can sleep through any noise…” 

They talked about sex in the abstract, and Sypha was horrified that Trevor’s church raised him with a healthy fear of masturbation. “‘Course, everyone does it anyway,” he explained. “The boys, at any rate. The girls don’t, or pretend not to. But they tell you it’s a sin you have to confess…” 

“To a priest?” she shrieked. 

“Yes, they say every time you spill your seed God kills a puppy, or…” 

“Your God kills _puppies_?!” 

“It’s a metaphor, Sypha. Or that you’ll go blind if you do it too much…”

She sniffed, “My eyes are fine,” and Trevor didn’t know whether to laugh or roll her over and fuck her again. She was still finishing dessert, so he laughed. “Why would they say that, about the puppies?!” she wondered, still indignant.

“I think the idea is that sex is only to get children, not for enjoyment—” 

She snorted at the ridiculousness of this statement.

“Which, by the way, is pulling out going to be enough?”

“I have a silphium tea,” she told him, and when he looked blankly at her she said, “Oh for heaven’s sake, Christians! I drink it every day and it keeps me from conceiving. It will help some now, only I have to take it for a month before it gains full strength.”

“So in a month…” he worked out—

“—Two weeks,” she mumbled.

He grinned. Oh, she was going to hear about this forever. “What was that? You’ve been plotting to take my honor for two solid weeks?”

“What honor?!” she huffed.

“Low, Sypha. Low. Of course,” he sighed, long suffering, “what can I expect from someone who can’t reach any higher?” 

She stalked across the bed of the wagon towards him on her hands and knees, ferocious. “I’ll show you where I can reach.”

“Would you, please, again?” He was laughing too hard to make an escape before she tackled him and started beating him with fists that weren’t really designed to hurt.

When they’d wrestled themselves silly, Sypha deposited herself on his chest and said regretfully, “It’s getting dark.”

“Yes.”

“And cold.”

Trevor played his part. “We should probably put our clothes on.”

“Yes, and get to bed.”

“Want to start early tomorrow?”

“Unless we’re attacked and have to kill things in the middle of the night.” She sounded gleeful at the possibility.

They dressed and packed away the dishes, then Sypha settled herself against his side in the dark as if they did this every evening. "You know," she said, faux-casual, "If you DO have a Jesus kink, I can probably find a spell to walk on water."   
  
"You are a bad person."   
  
"You like me." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UUuuuuuuUgh I hate first time scenes. So much pressure. 
> 
> Let's talk about birth control! 
> 
> Most of the birth control methods recommended in the middle ages (and antiquity, for that matter) did not work. Pulling out was the most effective method they had. Don't go drinking funny tea made from the plants in your neighborhood and expecting it to prevent pregnancy, okay? 
> 
> Today, coitus interruptus is still somewhat effective--though significantly less so than more modern methods--provided you do it correctly. The possibility of human error is pretty high. We now have lovely things like condoms and birth control and IUDs and so on that work so much better. I think our lovebirds here are being as responsible as they can (provided that they plan on having piv sex) in 1400s Wallachia. Do not follow their lead.


	6. Chapter 6

The next weeks went like this:

Trevor splayed on his stomach, Sypha’s hands on his back after a skirmish, cold at first and then suddenly warm and tingly, fingers digging into his muscles in a way that hurt like a bruise and was such a relief he thought his body would seize up if she stopped. She made her way down to his ass and he groaned. 

“Good groan or bad groan?” she asked.

“I think you’re killing me. Don’t stop.”

He could tell she was smiling without needing to see. “Go more gently. I can do that.” She took it easier but massaged his rear and thighs thoroughly. By the time she moved up to his back again, she’d lulled him half to sleep with the gentle push of her hands, pressing him rhythmically against the blankets on the floor of the wagon. Then she straddled him, pretending like she needed better access to work on his shoulders. She rolled her hips every time she pushed with the palms of her hands, and it didn’t take long to figure out that she was pleasing herself as much as working him. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to move on, though.

“I’ll do you, next,” he offered.

“I won’t turn you down, but I don’t get beaten the same way you do. Or sore.”

“About that,” Trevor mumbled into the blanket, where he was starting to drool, “Maybe we should get you some combat training. What are the chances you’ll need to punch someone eventually?”

“One hundred percent, but I already know how to punch.” She started on his hamstring and certain areas twitched. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time this week he’d had a conversation with her while half-aroused, which was impressive when you considered that with most people he’d rather do anything than talk. 

This was something he had wondered about for a while, though, so he pressed. “No really, Sypha. Can you be caught without magic?”

“Caught?”

“Can you run out of magic or...is there a spell that can keep you from doing it, or…?” 

“Hmm.” She stopped applying pressure and just rubbed her palms against his skin, thinking. Trevor wasn’t about to complain about that, either. He shifted his hips against the blanket—might as well enjoy himself while they talked. “A spell to keep magic from happening?” Sypha wondered. “A binding circle might do that, but someone would have to trap me in it first, which, since I am not actually a demon or a witch, is rather difficult. I’ve never heard of anything else that makes it impossible to do magic, but in theory that could exist. I do not normally get drained, though, because I don’t store magic in my body.”

“No? Where does it come from, then?”

“Oh, magic sources. Everywhere.”

He peeked over his shoulder at her, risking setting off the massive crick in his neck again just to give her a skeptical look. “Sypha, I cannot think of a way you could have answered that question more vaguely.”

“All right—” and now she’s taken her hands off of him so she can gesticulate, a necessary part of any explanation she gives— “so, I am not _made of_ magic. I can _do_ magic. It’s the same way that when I read a book I hear the words inside my head and form the story there, but it comes from outside of me. I don’t have to store a book in my body to read it.”

“Isn’t that kind of a blasphemous comparison, coming from a Speaker?”

“Oh, you and Alucard have thoroughly converted me to the ways of writing things down! I am a bad Speaker, now. But no, I do not run out of magic. I can be tired in the same way we get too tired to read or listen with attention, but as long as I can focus, I can keep casting.”

“And what if you can’t focus?”

“What?”

Trevor gave up on keeping his spine straight and propped on one arm.“What if an enemy hurts you so badly you can’t concentrate, or terrifies you, or...keeps singing really annoying, distracting songs so you can’t keep your thoughts straight?”

“Then it would be...difficult. That could keep me from casting. But I train my mind to withstand things like this.”

“Hmm,” Trevor considered. “What would be easier if you were hurt or distracted—making a fireball or swinging your fist?”

“I don’t know.” 

“So perhaps we train you, just to be safe.”

“To use your sword?”

“Mm hmm,” he said, by way of assent. “Or the whip.”

“I would like that. Turn over and I’ll do your front, now.”

Trevor turned obligingly and watched her eyes widen as they fastened on certain attentive parts of his anatomy. “Lovely!” she said. “I know just where to start.” 

  
...

  
  
And those weeks also went like this:

Sypha curled next to him at night like a sleepy kitten, first with her knees tucked into his side and her face on his shoulder, then rolling to put her back against him. The night air was chilly on his face, so he tucked the blankets carefully around them, a pocket of warmth. Sypha wrapped her feet around his calf in her sleep, and he was thinking how nice that was, until—

“Yow!”

She woke with a start when he yelled, throwing off the blankets and half-freezing them both, fire in her hand. Slowly, she realized that there wasn’t a threat, that in fact he was trying to tuck them back in again. “What?” she asked, irritated.

“Your feet are like ice.”

“You woke me up for this? I already knew this.”

“You put them on my leg.”

She yawned, settling back against him, sure to be asleep in moments. “I’m sorry.”

Trevor weighed the nice feeling of her twining around him in her sleep against the terrible feeling of an ice block pressed to his leg on a cold night, then sighed in resignation. “No, it’s okay. Warm them up on me.”

He braced himself and her toes pressed against the top of his foot, a sharp little jolt of frost. “Thank you, Treffy,” she said sweetly.

“No Treffy!”

She laughed, unrepentant, and he was fairly certain she was asleep again before her laughter died out.

“First thing we do in the next town,” he said into the darkness, “Is buy you some boots.” 

  
...

But sometimes there really were monsters. Trevor heard it invariably, a scuffle and a growl on the edge of his senses, even in sleep. He woke without movement and put his hand on Sypha’s now-healed arm, gripping hard. Normally a deep sleeper, Sypha woke instantly and completely at that touch. 

Some threats were easier to dispatch than others. Some monsters left bruises or cuts or even (in Trevor’s case) mild concussions, but he and Sypha always won. Their teamwork was getting better, for one thing. It had started with the pillar of ice Sypha made for him in Dracula’s castle, and now he was having a field day with the weapons her powers could make: Ice for him to vault off of. Fire for his shield, a whip that couldn’t be damaged by the flames slicing right through them to kill enemies on the other side. She tried throwing him with bursts of air a few times, but it was hard for either of them to control his landing when that happened, and it led to a few close calls before they decided it was better for Trevor to provide his own upward motion.

At the end of one fight about a week into their travels, he caught Sypha cross-armed and pouting just before she put out her flames.

“What?” he asked. “What did I do?”

“I don’t see why _you_ get to have all the fun, leaping up in the air like that.”

The next morning when he woke she was already out of bed, which had never once happened before. The blankets were cold next to him and he was tempted for a moment to worry, but Sypha’s quiet muttering came from nearby, the sounds she made when she was working on an intellectual problem. Trevor peeked his head through the wagon flap to see what she was up to. 

She mumbled something to herself by way of a reminder, got a running start, flicked her wrist, and leaped in a spin like a dancer. She landed on an ice block that Trevor hadn’t even seen her make, a stairstep in the air, and pirouetted. Her arms pinwheeled awkwardly—she’d overshot her spin—but she leaped off and landed on her feet all the same. “Timing’s different on ice,” he heard her note.

“You could just jump without the spin,” he called, getting the bonus satisfaction of watching her whirl towards him so quickly that she nearly fell on her ass on solid ground. He laughed at her.

“I can already do it without the spin,” she told him, dignified, “but I want to master it.”

“Hmm, looks fun. That what you have planned today?”

“I think we should travel some, too.”

“All right.” He stretched and climbed onto the wagon bench to put on his boots. “When we stop for lunch I want to teach you how to use a sword.”

She clapped her hands in delight. “Would you?!” 

When they stopped for lunch, Sypha was less happy. In fact, when he gave his first instruction, the look on her face was near rebellion. “I thought you were going to teach me how to fight with a sword.” 

“This is the first step. I know exactly how much muscle you don’t have on your body; you couldn’t lift a sword yet.”

“I am in good health, and I could outrun you any day, Trevor Belmont!”

“Heart, good. Lungs, good. Legs, _very_ good. But your arms are like a toddler’s, so you start with ten pushups.”

“And then you’ll teach me to use the sword?”

“When you can do twenty in a row, I’ll teach you how to use it.”

“I’ll do twenty right now,” she huffed, hopping to the ground. 

She made it through seven before falling on her face, arms stretched out against the earth.

“Weak.”

“Piss off, Trevor! I’ll do it again. More this time.”

“You’ll do less. You’re tired from the first rather miserable attempt.”

Her face looked like thunder, a hint more real anger than he was used to seeing there, but she could get over it and stop being such a baby. Sypha was not the sort of woman who accepted protection, which was kind of a pity since she was constantly throwing herself into danger. At a distance she was far more powerful than he, but what was going to happen if some creature got a hand on her? She had better toughen up and learn some weaponry, that’s what.

When she got off the ground the second time she stomped back to their picnic blanket and sat with an angry flounce that let Trevor know he was not going to have any fun this evening. He trailed behind her, giving her a moment’s space. By the time he sat beside her, though, she was smiling.

He...he didn’t like the look of that smile.

“You know,” she said sweetly, “If you are going to teach me to fight, I really ought to return the favor and teach you to cast.”

“Can’t cast. I’m not magic.”

“You might be surprised. Many simple spells are excellent in battle and accessible to non-mages if they have some source of power other than themselves. We could...oh...set your whip on fire without damaging it, or extend its reach, or—”

“You have no complaints about the length of my whip,” he put in.

“If you’re going to make phallic jokes,” and her tone was bored, “say ‘sword.’ I think you just called yourself soft. But that is not the point. If I do your thing, you have to do mine. AND—” she said, just as he opened his mouth for the most fantastic dirty joke, “—you can skip the comment about doing mine.”

“Fine,” he sighed, resigned. “I’ll do your...spell...thing.”

“Good!” She patted him on the head, which was annoyingly patronizing, and smiled at him, which was kind of nice. “Now, let’s see, where to start. Do you speak Latin?”

“Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae,” Trevor intoned dutifully.

“Perfect!”

“Sypha, I have no idea what I’m doing. That’s just some crap we say in church.”

“Well...do you have any Arabic or Adamic?”

“Uhm...no?”

“Latin it is, then.” 

The majority of their time—fighting monsters, fucking, eating, laughing at each other—was still pleasant, ominously so, like the calm before the storm. But that day’s agreement introduced two truly irritating elements.

The first was Sypha’s stubborn brat attitude about strength training. Even after he let her try his sword and confirmed that she could barely lift it, she still bitched and moaned about every push-up or curl that he made her do.

“You know,” he said, as she gritted her teeth and lifted their water jug straight up behind her, “you complain quite a lot when the slightest thing doesn’t go your way. Were you spoiled as a child?”

“No,” she ground out, eyes shooting daggers at him.

“I think you were spoiled. What was it your grandfather called you when I brought you back to him? ‘My angel?’ I thought, now see, here is someone who could never for one second be called angelic, so she must be spoiled.”

“I hate you.”

She complained a little less when he taught her to punch things and throw spears. And when he had her train by trying to punch him, she seemed positively happy.

The second point of irritation was Sypha’s Latin lessons, which were so mind-numbingly boring that he thought his spine was going to shoot right out of his body if he had to sit still for a single moment of them. He tried; he really did. He simply couldn’t stand them. 

“Look here,” she said, “Do you recognize these words?”

“No.”

“Say them aloud,” she coaxed, as if he were seven. 

“Schola.”

“What does that mean?”

“Scholar; that’s you.”

“Or school, or skill, but it is all the same word family. You see? You know this! With Latin, vocabulary isn’t the problem, but declensions mean that word order— Stop _squirming_ , Trevor!” 

“I have no idea what you’re saying, and this stuff makes me want to crawl out of my own skin.” He didn’t hate books, really. Just boring books. And he felt stupid and frustrated and inferior, and angry at himself for taking it out on Sypha. 

“Honestly, if you would just _listen_ , I would _tell_ you what you need to know! And acting like you are dying when you have to look at a book for two minutes is rich; you had me carrying buckets of water for half an hour. I am in _actual_ pain!”

“It’s good for you.”

“Discipline, Trevor! Focus!”

The whole thing just pointed up how very different their ideas of discipline were. Sypha could tear through a dozen books like that when a single sentence made Trevor want to rip the hairs from his head one at a time, but she would have collapsed in a tantrum at the hours of sword drills he’d been assigned as a child. Really, it reminded him of what he’d known since the beginning of this trip: he and Sypha were fundamentally unalike. Some day she was going to discover this, too. She’d studied stories and magic for years, so when she found that she was actually good at fighting it had seemed like a grand adventure, a break from all that tedious learning. Here she was going on vacation, trying new things. And she _was_ good at fighting, her quick thinking and utter lack of boundaries making her the best combat magician he’d ever seen, but it...it wasn’t her primary talent. Sooner or later she’d realize that scholarship was her real calling, and her playtime would be over. And then what? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit of a lull, but I wanted to explore how each of them reacted to something they weren't already good at, how magic worked, and Trevor's constant fear that Sypha's going to figure out she's too good for him and then leave him. More fighting and sex planned for next chapter--fighting and sex at the same time, even!


	7. Chapter 7

A week of travel took them into the mountains proper, though they stayed on well-beaten paths so their antique of a wagon wouldn’t get stuck. Still, two weeks in they found themselves traveling with a cliff on one side and a ravine on the other, and it was nearly dark before they made it through the pass and found a place to pitch camp. They fed themselves and the horses and cleaned up dinner in the dark. Sypha extinguished their small cooking fire, stretched, and took off her outer tunic for sleeping. Trevor reached for her. 

She caught his hand at her waist. “You might not want to tonight; I’m bleeding.” 

“Bleeding?” he asked in alarm. They hadn’t fought in a day, and she certainly wasn’t wounded in that little scuffle… 

“Oh,” she laughed, seeing his face, “I’m not injured. I have my period.” 

Ah. Yes, well, that made more sense. “Does it hurt, then?” 

“Only a bit. My back has ached all day, but half of that is the seat of the wag— Oh, you mean to have sex? No, I don’t think so.” 

“Could be fun,” he offered. 

“Trevor, I am bleeding like a stuck pig. It will get all over both of us, and I certainly smell funny.” 

“I don’t mind if you don’t.” His arms circled her waist. He drew her in close. “And you’ve been putting up with my smell for a month, now.” 

She smiled up at him. “You do not smell.” And there went the quirk at the corner of her mouth that meant she was about to tease him. “Anymore.” 

“Ouch,” he protested. Then he dipped his head for a long, long kiss. Sypha’s arms wound around his neck; her fingers played with his hair, his earlobe. He dug his fingers into the small of her back, a light massage, and she sighed against his lips in gratitude. “So,” he asked when they broke for air, “Are you game? We certainly don’t have to if you don’t feel well.” 

She shrugged, skeptical but interested. “I’m all right with it if you are.” 

“Of course, it’s going to draw any night creature in a ten kilometer radius.” 

“Yes.” 

“Are you tired or bored?” 

“Oh, definitely not tired. We need more of a challenge than they’ve been lately, though.” She considered. “Let’s say… you have to get me off before we fight.” 

He snorted dismissively. “That’s not much of a challenge.” 

Sypha hit him in the shoulder. 

He hadn’t been exaggerating, though, and she started to sigh in pleasure before he’d even finished undressing her. She spread an old blanket on the ground for them, his weapons laid carefully next to it. Their clothes went on the wagon seat, his shirt and vest, every stitch of hers. He left his pants on. No way was he fighting monsters bare-assed with his dick hanging out. 

“Your pants will get bloody,” Sypha warned, watching him from the blanket, her nose scrunched in distaste. 

“Oh, that will be the first time.” He joined her on the ground and tweaked her nose to tease that expression off of her face. “Contrary to popular opinion, I know how to wash blood out of my clothes.” 

She laughed, which turned into a happy sigh as he palmed a breast and dropped his lips to that spot where her ear and jaw and neck met.

“But if you’re worried,” he whispered next to her ear, “I’ll let you undo the fly.” 

That got him an appreciative hum and a little wiggle, then she reached her hands over her head and arched, stretching. Against the dun-colored blanket, her skin looked white in the moonlight, glowing like another moon. Her breasts under his hand were… “These are huge today,” he told her, which was about the least romantic thing he could say, but she moaned appreciatively all the same because Sypha had a refreshingly earthy idea of romance. 

He settled over her on his elbows, then pushed her breasts together and made a nice little crevasse between them where he could dip his head and bite one lightly. Plump, tempting...sometimes he almost understood vampires. 

“Trevor, don’t  _ bite _ .” 

“Sorry.” But he was there, and clearly those wanted attention or they wouldn’t look so good three centimeters from his face. Instead of devouring her, he took her nipple into his mouth and she canted one hip obligingly between his, the sharp bone grinding against his well-underway erection. 

“Mmm,” she said, and then, “Come  _ here _ ,” and her hand slipped from his shoulders to his ass, pulling him bossily against her hip and holding him there while she rocked. He swallowed a groan. It had taken her about zero minutes to learn how to get him hard, and after a few weeks she had quite the repertoire of tricks. 

Trevor wondered idly if those would be read into the Speaker memory stores. Surely they weren’t as open about everything as Sypha seemed to be?

He dipped his head again to her neck, her ear, her breast, her shoulder, and Sypha writhed under him, arching against his chest, putting on a show. She wriggled her hand into his pants but couldn’t reach down far enough to get the handful of ass that she was aiming for, so she pushed him onto his back instead and went with him, rolling to one elbow and starting on the button at the top of his pants. He ran his hand down her body and between her legs just as she got his fly undone and closed her hand around his cock. 

“You’re ready,” she observed, pleased. 

“You’re beautiful,” he told her. 

Wet, too, although he supposed that could have been blood. She’d been worried about putting him off, but even if there was a chance in hell of that happening he couldn’t see much in the moonlight, anyway. Not that he needed to see to get her off.

Sypha bent her leg to give him access. 

It wasn’t easy to tease his way around her folds with her hand pulling open his pants and pumping at his dick like that, and when she stopped to lick her fingers then fold him once more into that slick grasp, he lost his rhythm entirely. 

Sypha leaned over him, her kiss hungry, a tangle of tongue and lips and desire. Her hand slid tightly over the head of his cock. He wanted her so badly…. 

Trevor rolled her onto her back and was on top of her in one motion. She laughed and reached between his legs again to position him. 

“You don’t want me to touch you more first?” 

“Oh, you are not going _in_ , yet.” Instead, she pushed her hips up to meet him and drug the tip of his erection across her sex. 

Oh. He lowered his hips a little to make it easier for her. That was...creative. That was… very, very wet. And good. Very good.

She tightened her grip on him and pulled his head across her folds in a quick rhythm, using him to please herself, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen anything this hot. 

Sypha unwound quickly, and Trevor, watching her, was beginning to fear that he’d spill right there against her before he even got inside. Her breath hitched, then hitched again. He watched her throat as she swallowed. She licked her lips and looked at him, eyes glittering. 

“Inside me.” It was a moan. “Now.” 

He didn’t need to be told twice. She took him easily, wet and soft, all those slick muscles inside of her clenched around him. She really had gotten herself close. And… “Fuck, Sypha. Holy fuck, you feel good.” He pulled back just so he could push in again, and again, and when she brought her legs up along his sides like she was riding a horse, he let himself go and fucked her in earnest—quick, sharp movements punctuated when he drove inside her hard. 

Her thighs on each side of him helped him keep the rhythm. She could have braced them if she wanted, could have stopped him from pushing in so deeply if he hurt her, but she didn’t. Instead her eyes were closed, the tight look on her face one of concentration, looking inside herself for the pleasure he was putting there. God, she was perfect. God, he wanted to fuck her. Which was fortunate, because that’s exactly what he was doing. 

He could smell her now, the rich, tangy scent of blood mixing with the more familiar scent of her arousal. The monsters in these woods would have to be approaching, despite their lack of a campfire; they must have smelled her ten minutes ago. A woman’s blood and a woman’s sex...nothing more irresistable to them. 

_You can fuck her right now, Belmont_ , he told himself. _Make her come on you, quick, then turn and fight._ The thought was heady, he pulsed inside of her, Sypha felt it, she moaned. 

“I’m going to come soon,” he told her. 

She slit her eyes open to look at him lazily. “You can finish inside of me.” 

To his credit, his rhythm didn’t stutter. “What?” 

“I track my cycles. I won’t get pregnant right now.” 

“So I can…” He wanted to make sure he didn’t get this wrong. 

Sypha opened her eyes fully and enunciated as clearly as she could with 95 kilos of man on top of her, “You can come. Inside of me. I want you to bury your cock in me and finish—oh,” she moaned, as he drove home, “right there.” She swirled her tongue around the pulse point just beneath his jaw, then gasped as he pushed back into her.

Trevor buried his face in her neck and tried not to growl in response.

Then the show really started. “Fuck, Trevor, fuck,” —louder, then louder still, “Please.” He’d never heard Sypha be quiet, not even in her sleep, but this was…new. This was… 

Oh. She was drawing them in. From a distance, he realized with the last bit of blood left in his brain, it had to sound like a woman’s distress.    
  
Up close, the only distress Sypha was in involved her desperate climb towards her own orgasm. 

He wasn’t sure he could wait for her. Her skin had flushed clear down her chest. Her breath was coming in those little gasps. A drop of his sweat splattered between her breasts. “Hard, Trevor,” she demanded, and then louder, for their audience, “Oh, my God, please.” He drove into her until their hips met. Yeah, he couldn’t wait any longer. “Sypha, I’m going to—” 

“—come in me,” she reminded him, and he was spilling over, one sharp movement inside her, then another, and she was clenching around him, tight and perfect and wet—though he supposed that was at least half blood mixing with his semen—and that thought was hot, too. 

He muffled his groan against her neck, and she locked her legs around his body in an embrace, and they stayed there for a moment, Trevor breathing in her scent, perfectly satisfied in a way he hadn’t thought he’d ever get while he was conscious. 

Then Sypha dug her heels into his ass and rocked against him, and he remembered. Night creatures. Hurrying. And anyway, she was so close he could probably blow on her and knock her over the edge into orgasm. He rolled his hips against hers, in and out, more gently now, and she growled in her throat in frustration. 

“Not enough for you?” he teased. 

“Fuck you,” she moaned. “I thought the deal was you get me o—” 

He reached a hand between them and thumbed her clit. 

It was the lightest of touches, but she reacted instantly, the word changing to a high, sharp sound— “—offffff ooooh. Oh!” He fingered her carefully and fucked her lazily, and she came hard, arching upwards and clenching on what was left of his erection. 

“Oh, fuck,” she sighed in satisfaction. Then she let her hand flop to the side and shot fire out of it. 

Trevor jumped up in an instant, one hand on the Morning Star and the other on the top button of his pants, as a lycanthrope screamed and went up in flames. 

Sypha stood, bringing the blanket with her. “You know,” she observed. “I don’t think you won that game. They were definitely here before I came.” She offered the corner of the blanket. “Wipe the blood off your hand.” 

Instead he flicked his wrist and caught the next two on his chain as they jumped. They exploded in what was, he thought, a more impressive display than her fire. He rewarded himself by kissing the back of her neck as he finished the buttons to his pants. 

Sypha shivered in pleasure, fire in one hand, ice in the other, completely naked as they faced down the next six creatures. “Maybe it was a tie,” she offered. 

And then they fought, every monster an outlet for the momentum they’d built up these past weeks. 

Thick woods like these called for a sword, not a whip. Trevor weakened the minotaur advancing on him with a solid kick to the balls, and that made it mad enough to do what minotaurs inevitably do--head down, it charged him. 

He sidestepped before it could pin him to the closest tree and brought the sword down on its head in a glancing chop, but didn't manage the killing stroke. Instead of clueing it in to his tricks, though, that just made the stupid thing more angry, and on the next pass… 

It caught him full in the stomach and tossed him into the air. Luckily, it missed him with the horns, but most of its brain had apparently been removed from its head to make room for solid bone, and it winded him. 

A well-placed tree broke his fall. Fucking great, now he’d have bruises on the back, too. 

The creature had tossed him a good twenty yards, though, which meant he had just a moment to catch his breath and indulge in another aspect of this dance. Every ten seconds—he’d worked it into his steps—he scanned for Sypha, making sure she was managing. Once in a while he caught her doing the same for him. Swing of the arm, sidestep, get punched in the fucking gut, cough, then get a little distance and check on Sypha— 

—He saw it less than a second before it happened, a werewolf’s grip on one of her wrists, claws inches from her face, and there was no  _ time _ — 

Sypha’s arm came up and the creature’s claws echoed off of something hard. Her hand. She’d frozen her hand into a shield. The werewolf came back for a swipe at her throat, but she blocked it again and then the ice on her hand morphed, elongated, sharpened… and she caught it through the head with a short spear.

Trevor watched all of this at a full run, angry minotaur trailing him, hoping at least to get to the second wolf coming up behind her. Before he was in range, though, Sypha turned around and punched it in the mouth, sinking her shielded arm into its jaws, the ice on her hand expanding until the creature’s head exploded. Oh, good girl! Dangerous game, though.

The look that she gave him said,  _ Did you see me?  _ Out loud, she said, “That was fun!” 

“That’s my girl,” he said fondly. 

“Behind you!” 

He jumped out of the way and on the next pass sank his sword into the minotaur’s neck. In a rare display of sharing, Sypha stood back and let him have his fun. 

After that, her fighting style was much more physical. When they’d met, Sypha had fought like a typical magician—she protected herself by being fast with the spells. She’d taken down Dracula’s henchmen that way too, fireballs and ice spikes and anything she could think of flying through the air at them. This new discovery—that not all magic was conducted by meeting thumb and fingertips—led to some interesting experimentation. She tested her range and discovered that she could make ice or fire survive yards away from her own body for any length of time, and then she began to fight in three dimensions, ice arrows flying at creatures from behind them, above, below, anywhere they weren’t looking. He honestly felt a little bad for them. 

And then one morning he woke to find her missing from his side again, and when he pushed aside the wagon flap, he couldn’t see anything. 

His eye caught the ice before he saw her. A foot-sized step hovering in mid-air, and then another, and another, straight up into the sky. And then he saw her, perched above the treeline, a dark outline against a brightening day. Sypha was...dancing. Leaping, spinning, making a new little step of ice only after her foot had left the last. She did, he had to admit, look like an angel—a terrifying, avenging angel, sword of fire in hand. And Trevor was terrified. Not that she’d fall—she seemed to have gotten this down at last—but that she’d grown beyond him, even in the most literal sense. She could walk on air. 

When she saw him she stopped, hunching her shoulders in that way that made him fairly certain she was also blushing at being caught. “Wait, I’ll come down,” she said, and did. 

By the end of the week, she’d discovered that she could light her hands on fire and use them to fly. 

“Does it have to come from the hands?” Trevor had asked, an attempt to have a normal conversation about an ability that was frankly crazy. 

Sypha had shrugged. “I don’t know. It always has for me.” 

“Hmm. You’d be a lot more steady in the air if you could get fire to fly out of your ass. Then you could still fight with your hands, too.” 

“Trevor Belmont!” 

“What? Nevermind; I already know.” 

“RUDE!” 


	8. Chapter 8

Being on the road with Sypha was a refreshing change, but the towns were nice, too.

Actually, sometimes they very much weren’t. Sometimes Trevor ended up putting the deputy constable’s brother-in-law in traction because the man was a sick fuck who liked to kick cats, and then they had to do a tricky combination of threatening the guards and leaving as quickly as they could, which wasn’t very fast considering that their unhurried horses were living their best lives, while the wagon itself had seen better days.

But some places...some places had taverns. Trevor always went there first because you were much less likely to see some asshole make a stupid decision and feel like you had to do something about it when you were sitting at a table, minding your own business, nursing an ale. Sypha “didn’t much like beer,” and “preferred a nice strawberry wine,” which was frankly not one of her most endearing traits. They didn’t stop in the kind of towns that had a nice strawberry wine, though, so after one very questionable night when she had two shots of Țuică, she took little sips of the beer and made that wrinkled-nose face with every one. Once, though, they saved an old widower who made raspberry liquor, and there followed a delightfully tipsy night in a borrowed bed that was only big enough to sleep Sypha, the two of them doing a poor job of keeping their voices down. 

And then one day they stumbled into another of those little towns, took out a fat, nasty monster that had been squatting at the bottom of the communal well, and returned to the tavern covered in slime and monster guts. The grateful tavern owner didn’t operate an inn, but he did have—Trevor’s eyes glowed when he was shown into the back rooms—a brewery! With—count them—one two three different types of ale available! (Trevor counted them.) Breweries meant lots of warm water, and he and Sypha ended the afternoon cleaner and more comfortable than they had been in a long while.

And then they celebrated. Surely Sypha liked _some_ kind of beer. Had she tried them all? How could she possibly know? And how could she complain about the drink, he reasoned, until she really gave it a chance?”

“I’ve tasted beer,” she said, wrinkling her nose again. “You’ve watched me drink it, and I have tasted ALL KINDS on your tongue.” 

But he knew her well enough to know that he could needle her for not being objective, not doing her research thoroughly, and the result was that she drank most of three large tankards, concluding, befuddled, at the end of the third, “This one doesn’t taste like anything.”

“Oooookay, time to get you back to the wagon,” he said. She’d gone a little red in the face.

“All right.” And a little too pliant, also. 

They’d parked in the empty market grounds. By the time they made the short walk, fingers entwined, the air was harsh with the kind of cold that chilled your nose but nothing more.

“I do _not_ like so much beer,” Sypha declared. “It sits too heavy in your stomach. But—” she turned to him and went up on tiptoe to wrap her arms around his neck— “I _do_ like you.” Then she gave him a sweet and very beer-flavored kiss which, he had to admit, was his ideal experience.

“Light your hand up,” he said. “I want to see you.” 

She did, the light revealing that her coloring had gone down to normal. She was still damp with sweat, though, her hair sticking to her face in tiny curls. Her pupils were...not quite blown, but not re-focusing very quickly. Trevor felt abruptly and completely guilty.

“Take me to bed,” she said.

“Wait,” he told her soothingly. “Do you need to piss?”

She considered, swaying just a little. She was probably not wasted, but she was far gone enough that he hoped they weren't attacked in the night. He wished he hadn’t underestimated just how much smaller she was, and how much of an effect a lack of tolerance would have too, probably. “Yes,” she said.

He let her handle that herself, then passed her a big tankard of water, which she gulped gratefully.

“Feeling better?”

She burped. “I still do not like that stuff.”

“Fair enough, you did the research.”

“Coming to bed?”

He considered. She wasn’t completely deprived of her decision making capacity, and she seemed to be sobering up some, but still… “You go on ahead. I’ll be there in a bit.”

She disappeared behind the wagon flap and he spent some time thoroughly checking over his weapons. Then he climbed into the wagon and placed them carefully next to the bedroll. Sypha had fallen asleep in the middle of it, on top of the blankets, of course. He shifted her to one side and covered her up, crawling in next to her and pressing his nose to her neck. Her hair still stuck in damp little wisps at the nape, and she smelled of sweat and Sypha, and it was a good way to go to sleep.

The next day she ordered an ale, not the hoppy stuff. She drank half a tankard without making a single face, then slid the rest of it to Trevor. “Not so bad,” she admitted.

Well, it was an acquired taste.

…

  
  
The next town, Lindenfeld, was a proper seat of civilization. It boasted a minster, so Sypha could ooh and aah over its architecture, a township judge who actually knew his town, not just one of the boyars who sat on their asses and collected taxes, an _inn_ that presumably had _beds_ , and—was that?—beer! They’d even managed to show up with money, and at a time of day when Sypha couldn’t object to his having a drink.

“Could I get a mug?” he asked. “I’ll have some coin in a minute.”

But he’d had the good fortune to encounter yet another kindly brewer. “You killed that bastard thing. You get one free,” the man said. 

Free beer. Even better than beer.

The brewer slid the mug in front of him, full and smelling of hops and foamy on the top, the way the best beer frothed when the keg had just been tapped. Trevor inhaled deeply, letting the foam tickle his nose, then lifted the beer to his mouth, only a second away from the taste that would bite the back of his tongue and the warmth that made everything bearable. “Oh, my God,” he said, speaking to the beer, his only habitual prayer of thanks, “That is better than sex.” 

The drink didn’t hear him, but Sypha did. “ _Better_ than _sex?”_ And the next moment he was dumping out a frozen lump of what used to be beer.

He rounded on Sypha, but she already had her arms crossed. “ _Better_ than _sex_?”

Trevor knew enough to go into instant placate mode. “Uh, well, no, not—, not—. Just...different. Differently good.” For once thing, beer had always been available to him, while sex had not. 

But Sypha didn’t look like she was in the mood for a reasonable conversation right now. “Really?”

“I didn’t mean—”

Appeasing was usually the way to go with her, unless her dramatic side got the upper hand of her reasonable side and she started turning it into a story about how she’d been wronged. “I do hope you sleep well tonight,” she said, voice sweet and dangerous. “With my tiny, ice foot shoved all the way up your ass!”

Yep, she was going to spin this one into some tale of poor, wronged Sypha, which meant that he might as well give up on saying he was sorry, since that would only play into her narrative, anyway. And truthfully, he wasn’t sorry. She’d ruined a good beer, and now he had none.

“I just paid two coins for that,” he said, still trying to keep his calm. “Or I would have, if—” 

“—Apparently it’s more _valuable_ than sex, too.”

He opened his mouth to tell her about the utter gall she had, taking away his one pleasure when they were on her adventure doing what she wanted—

But you know what? Unlike Sypha, he didn’t much like public scenes, anyway. He stalked towards the inn, Sypha trailing him and muttering under her breath.

By the time they got their room, he was the one who was fuming mad. Sypha, on the other hand, had simmered into “putting on a show of outrage” mad because _of course_ she was the aggrieved party. The very small voice in his mind that sometimes told him sensible things took one look at the airy room, the trays full of candles, and the big bed with its sturdy, wooden frame and thick mattress and started a litany: _Don’t waste the chance to use the bed. Don’t waste the chance to use the bed_. He’d never been particularly inclined to listen to that voice anyway.

And Sypha didn’t seem to have that voice at all. “Better than sex?” she repeated.

“What is your problem?”

“My problem is that _you_ treat me like—” 

“Like what?” he asked. “We do everything you want. You know it was a joke, hell, not even a joke, more like a passing comment, Sypha. You know how I feel about you because you understand how people feel. And how many times have you called me your pet bear or idiot manservant, or...or...sidekick?” he finished. “You can dish it out, but you can’t take it, is that it?”

Her fists were balled at her sides, he would bet with fire inside of them, her mouth pressed into a displeased line, but it was her eyes—brimming with tears—that got him. Oh, no. She didn’t get to cry about this; _she’d_ ruined _his_ beer.

“Well?” he asked, arms crossed.

“Sometimes,” she said quietly, “I forget that you are determined to show the world the worst side of yourself. Sometimes it is just us, and I forget that while you are...good—you’re very good, Trevor—you are also hellbent on your own destruction.”

“By drinking a beer? You had an ale at the last town, Sypha.”

“Yes, _one_! How many did you have?”

He thought back. Five had been nice, and then he’d kept going… “Seven to...nine” he admitted.

For some reason, that hurt her. He didn’t understand it, but he could tell that the pain was genuine. “I thought you would be happier with me,” she said quietly. 

“I am!” he shouted, exasperated.

“Then why are you still trying to kill yourself?!”

Why was he...Oh. He put his hand over his face and couldn’t decide whether to rage or laugh. “I’m not going to drink myself to death, Sypha. If that were possible, I would have done it already.”

“It _is_ possible!” she insisted.

“Look, seven drinks over the course of an evening is not catastrophic. That’s only a heavy buzz for me.”

“That is what worries me! Trevor, I know how tolerance works, and if you can drink that much and still see straight—what does that say about the organs in your body that are filtering all of that alcohol? You must be one big sieve on the inside.”

He still thought she was being naive about this, but he took her seriously. “I don’t think so. If my body were broken it would affect my ability to function, and it hasn’t. And I still heal very quickly.”

She shook her head, though. “You don’t understand what it’s like for me to watch that. In battle, you can protect yourself. Or I can protect you, if need be. But to watch you doing something so destructive, and to just say _nothing_... Some day I am going to lose you, and then I’ll wonder why I sat there and let it happen.”

 _She_ could protect _him_? He hadn’t thought she worried about him the way that he worried about her. She’d always seemed so sure of their success. “You know I drink,” he said, tired. “You accuse me— I act like a, how did you put it, an ‘emotionally stunted overgrown man-child’ more often than not. Why—” 

Sypha turned quickly and focused those big eyes right on his face, which made it all the more difficult to say what he thought. “What?” she asked quietly.

“Why are you here with me?”

She exploded into movement, into _anger_ , which he hadn’t expected. Hands flying into the air in exasperation, she shouted, “Because you are kind, you idiot! Because you are kind and actually smart when it comes to planning virtually anything, and because despite groaning and drinking the whole way, you are _invested_. You are not running away, and you are never going to let anyone get hurt while you are there.”

“You don’t need me to protect you.”

“Of course I don’t! You think I keep you around to service some need of _mine_?”

“Well—” his lip quirked.

“Oh, shut up, Trevor Belmont, stop trying to change the topic to sex. You are going to sit here and listen to me tell you that you are a good person even if you die of embarrassment.” 

He hadn’t expected the conversation to take this wild left turn, and he was pleased and mortified and needed to cover both of those things up. He groaned low in his throat. “How long is this going to take?”

“As long—” she jabbed her finger into his chest, “—as it takes.”

“Ouch.” 

“For one thing—” she ticked it off on the same finger that had just assaulted him— “I trust your judgment.”

“Well, knowing that makes me trust yours less.”

“Not about which direction to go when we are lost in the woods or how much you should drink; you are terrible at that. And you take the bait every single time; I have never seen you walk away from a situation when you could turn it into a petty bar brawl instead.”

“Sypha, I thought we were complimenting me.”

“ _But_ — I am getting there— you know what is right. Not just some of the time, and not only when it comes to taking care of the people you care about.” She straightened her skirt and sat on the bed with a self-conscious, haughty flick of her head. “Your instincts are good. You think you are here because of the sword and the whip? Plenty of people have swords, Trevor; don’t flatter yourself. On the other hand, I haven’t met many people who really know what is right and are willing to give up their comfort to do it. So—” her eyes narrowed, and she grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him down next to her— “if you drink yourself to death I will kill you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I will have Alucard bring you back as a vampire just so that I can kill you.”

“I don’t think he can do that.”

“And then I will cry forever, which I think is the thing you _really_ care about.” She was right in front of him now, frowning ferociously into his face, kittenish and full of energy and dead serious all at the same time, and faced with that, he gave up being angry or embarrassed.

“You would cry forever over me?” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled, and was rewarded when she lost her balance and tumbled onto his lap.

“Don’t make me cry, Trevor Belmont.”

He closed his eyes, just for a split second, and let himself feel the relief filling him. She had described him...accurately, not as better than he was. She wasn’t blind to his bad parts. Maybe she wouldn’t wake up tomorrow, or whenever they got back to her family, and leave him. 

So he rolled her onto the bed, pinned her hands to the mattress above her head, and made the conscious decision to let her win. “Sypha,” he teased, watching her smile back, “Would you really cry for me? That’s so touching.” He leaned in for a kiss.

She blew a raspberry straight into his mouth.

“HEY!”

And now she was laughing at him, arching beneath him in the process.

“I can’t kiss you?”

“Resolve this first.” She looked up at him, challenging.

Trevor sighed. “I can’t be what you want me to be. I can’t just stop drinking. After so many years my body needs it, and my...my mind needs it.” There, that was as close as he planned to get to admitting the way a beer or nine put him at peace. “But… I will work on it. Sincerely.”

“ _We_ will work on it,” Sypha corrected.

“ _Now_ can I kiss you?”

She nodded her assent.

Trevor let his hands slide down her sides but was stopped just before he got to her lips by Sypha saying, “Nuh-uh.”

“What now?!”

“Pin my hands to the bed again.” 

Hah. Of course. “Forward, Miss Belnades. You could buy me a drink, first.”

...

  
  


Afterwards, they fell straight to sleep without dinner, despite Sypha’s earlier protestations of hunger. They’d been up half the night fighting more often than not, and while Trevor enjoyed all of those opportunities to punch things without getting in trouble, it was a nice break to have four walls around them keeping out the cold and well-guarded gates around the town keeping out the monsters. And the bed was every bit as good as it looked.

Sypha woke him in the morning by smacking him in the face in her sleep, nearly breaking his nose in the process. Then she refused to wake up, which was also typical.

“I’ll just...go find some breakfast, shall I?” he asked. 

“Shh!” she said, pulling the covers over her head. She was scary when hungry, and if he left the room he wouldn’t be making noise, so he took that as a yes.

When he returned with two still-hot buns, she was awake (surprising) but not yet dressed (unsurprising).

“Breakfast!” he announced, perching the bread on one of the unfinished beams of their attic room. “I got the solid kind of wheat instead of the liquid kind, just for you.” 

Sypha didn’t respond. She was still working her way through her morning fog, which left her grumpy and confused until she finally woke in earnest. She stood there wearing only a shirt and one sock, her hair a mess on the side, imprint of the creases from the sheet on her face, and she stared at her shoes in befuddlement.

“What?” he asked, feeling fond.

“It’s only…”

“What is it only?”

“I KNOW I had two socks when we started.” She looked up at him, reproachful. “I did, Trevor. I had a sock on each foot.”

“Don’t ask me. You peeled those off, not me.”

And there was the mournful pout. “This sort of thing is EXACTLY why my feet are cold.”


	9. Chapter 9

As the sun set, they marched up the slope to Lindenfeld’s priory, Trevor and Sypha at the head of a group large enough to make Trevor feel uncomfortably like the leader of a militia...or maybe just an expendable soldier sent in with the first wave. The church doors were barred to them, but they’d expected nothing less. He cooled his heels while the soldiers formed up behind them and the Judge delivered his ultimatum, but there was no chance that Prior Sala would surrender without bloodshed, and this kind of posturing was uninteresting to him. So he kept his hand on the Morning Star and he caught Sypha’s eye where she stood hovering protectively over the Count St. Germain. She quirked her eyebrow at him: _ Here we go _ . They turned their attention to the priory, waiting for the fight to start. 

Then the boom of an explosion shook the town behind them, and all hell broke loose. Literally.

The flame poured out of first one home, then another, arching into the sky, twisting and snaking in pathways that no natural fire ever made. More houses caught, the conflagration so sudden and complete that it bowled over trees surrounding the town. At this distance, Trevor couldn’t hear any screams, or maybe there was no time for anyone to make them, but the people were burning in there, every one of them burning in a score of different homes, and he didn’t know how to stop it. He shoved down his panic, but it kept popping up in new places like some sick carnival game. He didn’t know how to save them.

One look at Sypha’s open-mouthed face told him they were beyond help.

The tongues of flame sought each other, coming together in a point high above their heads, until they were surrounded by a net of fire. They watched, helpless, waiting, waiting. Then those columns of flames poured down. Sypha held her hands out, ready, but no redirection was needed—the fire roared straight through the roof of the priory instead, like some serpent seeking its den. “We have to get in there,” Sypha was saying, and in her voice was...not quite panic, Desperation. They had to stop this, now. But how could they get through those doors? Maybe the narrow windows, or maybe could go through the roof, too, if it ever stopped burning. 

Then those shit for brains friars unbarred the doors and came rushing at them. Well. Very small blessings. 

Something was in that building—a single point of evil, something they could fight. An earlier conversation echoed in his head, the last time they’d come up against a threat too big, too hard, too impossible: _ I’ll protect you as long as I can. I know. _

But now they had a task before them, first humans, then devil pixies, and then the largest, nastiest flying creature he’d ever seen. Enemies. Real enemies, at last. 

“What  _ is _ that thing?” Sypha shouted to him. 

“I don’t know.” Things didn’t always look the way he’d pictured them based upon his ancestors’ descriptions. “I think it’s...an...angel?” 

He could hear her snort of derision even over the flames. “Bet it’s not!”

And then they simply fought. 

Ten seconds to snap at the creature with his whip, three seconds to fail spectacularly at getting to it before it grabbed Sypha by the head and tossed her straight into the air, five seconds to pray that Sypha regained consciousness before she hit the ground, and when she did, seemingly none the worse for the wear, ten seconds to slide the Morning Star along his enemy’s pitchfork and wait for the ball to swing back around and catch the creature full force. Apparently they hadn’t heard of pendulums in hell. 

Five seconds to watch Sypha in the air, surrounded by blood that wasn’t her own. Ten seconds to finish the beast by bludgeoning it with the butt of his whip. Simplest was always best. 

Down, St. Germain gestured. Sypha drove an icicle through the floor, making them a passageway, and then the three of them—St. Germain, Sypha, and himself—jumped down to confront the devil. 

For some reason the first thing Trevor’s perverse brain registered was Prior Sala, standing alone on the far side of the flames. The Prior drew a dagger, and Trevor had one beautiful moment to think,  _ Really, bitch? _ before he realized what the flames were feeding—a demon, pinned arms-splayed in a parody of the crucifixion. It opened its mouth, and before Sypha had time to say “Hellfire is just another kind of fire,” it was pouring its flames into a space at the corner of the basement… where a very-much-visible rift in the fabric of reality itself was forming. Shit. Portal to hell. Portal to hell was worse than Dracula. 

And then things started coming out of it. 

He could do this, but he couldn’t do it alone. “Sypha, do you have my back?” he asked.

“Always.” 

_ I’ll protect you for as long as I can, _ he’d told her. 

_ Always, _ she’d replied. 

…

He’d never fought so hard in his life, though he’d certainly been more terrified. They had their roles. They knew what to do. The only thing left to determine was if they could do it. St. Germain struggled against the portal. Trevor handled creatures as they emerged from the passage and kept the big, nasty demon, the priory’s visitor, busy with a little good old Wallachian hospitality, while Sypha handled literally everything else. 

“Keep it distracted!” the Count shouted over the whistling of a wind that came from another dimension. “Don’t finish it!” Well, wasn’t that the worst of all possible worlds? 

He thought he’d hit the thing far too hard, was just about to cry a warning to St. Germain, when he realized—the damn thing hadn’t died. In fact, it was healing itself. “How is this thing still standing?” he wondered, not really expecting a response. But the Count called back, “Because it’s been filled with the souls of the recently murdered!” 

So he didn’t have to worry about finishing it too early. Good.

The demon slammed him against a pillar and he assessed damage on the way back up: blood on his sleeve and blood on the ground where he’d coughed, too much to be from a tooth, so he must have injured something internally. No sharp pain when he breathed, nothing so bad that he could feel it through the rush of fighting. But that thing skittered towards him like some kind of salamander and regenerated limbs as fast as he destroyed them, and he couldn’t afford to take many more hits. He couldn’t do this forever. 

What he wouldn’t give for a large bucket of salt right now. 

Then St. Germain jumped on the demon’s back, jabbed a finger in its eye, and rode it as if it were a wild pony. “Well, Christ in hell,” Trevor muttered, “If I’d known that was the thing to do—” 

St. Germain leaped off. “Belmont,” he called, “kill it!” 

Hell. Yes. 

He muttered a little something that Sypha had taught him, the church Latin flowing easily through his whip. He didn’t need to be magic; the whip itself was imbued with power. Then he crossed his weapons, Vampire Hunter and Morning Star, both built for his hands, and snapped them once, twice… 

And they lit up with holy fire. He didn’t wait for an opening; he drove them both through the creature’s middle, cleaving it straight in half. It exploded in a spectacular display of demon guts. 

Everything between his neck and his hips hurt. Where was Sypha? Was she still alive? Here she was, too small to be a demon, slipping her arm under his shoulder. Ouch. Ribs. Ouch.

“I’m closing the corridor!” St. Germain called to them. “Get out now!” 

“Run,” Trevor said, and they ran. The priory crumbled around them. Trevor was just about to make a quip about how thoroughly they’d done their job—broken Dracula’s castle last time and knocked down the whole bloody church this time—when they caught sight of the Judge, lying on the ground. Fuck. The whole town gone, and now the one official who’d been nice to them, who had asked for their help like a civilized person instead of trying to have them executed first. 

Sypha slid to her knees next to the Judge, hands fluttering helplessly. She could mend bones and fix cuts, given enough time and energy but this—a stake through the chest—well, it was beyond her, and the panicked look she sent in Trevor’s direction said as much. 

Apparently, they could win all of the fights and save none of the people. Not the combination he would have chosen. 

“Give me my knife,” the Judge said, and then, “Burn my house down,” both as if he knew they would follow his instructions even after death. He died holding Sypha’s hand. Trevor couldn’t go to them. He could strongarm and fight and even protect, but here, once it was all over, he had nothing to offer. Sypha looked up at him, the Judge’s blood smeared over her fingers, stricken. Only she didn’t mind blood, and this death wasn’t her fault. It was sad. It was just one more man. It was fine.

And technically, they’d won. Hadn’t they? They’d beaten all of their enemies and sent them screaming back to hell. They’d closed the corridor. They’d foiled the friars’ plans to bring Dracula back. They...they hadn’t saved the town, not a single person in it. But they’d won. Hadn’t they? 

Night in the mountains settled over your skin with a chill that made you feel dirty, like you needed a bath to wash it away. Trevor had become accustomed, over the years, to feeling dirty, but lately he’d gotten soft. That was how he felt when they found the pit—inexplicably dirty and yet soft in the middle, like somebody had told him a nasty joke and he didn’t know what to say in response. 

“Well,” he finally decided, “Sala’s dead, anyway.” 

Sypha said nothing. 

“Come on, let’s go.” 

They went to the Judge’s house, in accordance with his last wishes. They checked inside of it before burning it down, because it seemed unforgivably careless not to investigate before burning the last standing building in the whole town.

They found shoes. Children’s shoes, hidden away like souvenirs.  _ Empty shoes _ , Trevor’s stupid brain said, but of course empty was better than the alternative.

Sypha just had to spell it all out. “He said...he killed Sala.” 

“Yeah,” Trevor agreed, willing her to shut up. She didn’t. 

“It was his pit.”

He expected Sypha to retch, to scream, to do...something, she always did something...but she just stood quietly and her face told him the whole story, instead. Betrayal. Horror. Guilt. They’d sided with a murderer, a child murderer, they’d helped him. 

_ I’m sorry _ , Trevor wanted to tell her. _ I thought he was a decent person. You should have known better than to trust my judgment. This is why I assume the worst of everyone, so I don’t fuck up this royally.  _ He took a breath, but he couldn’t tell her any of that, and anyway he’d learned enough to know it wouldn’t be comforting.  _ You shouldn’t trust people _ , he wanted to say, and also  _ Please don’t stop trusting people. I’m sorry _ , he wanted to say,  _ Please don’t look like that. Please don’t let me have ruined you. I’m sorry, Sypha, so sorry.  _

She created four balls of fire and sent them at the building with geometric efficiency, making sure the house burned evenly, though who might possibly see it and put the fire out, he couldn’t imagine. He reached for her hand. She wouldn’t unball her fist, but her hand lingered near his, at least, and she didn’t pull away when he turned towards her. “I want to leave here. Now,” she said, “And never come back.”

The world settled back into the old shape Trevor knew, the ugly lack of mercy, the pattern of cruelty. He could practically hear it click into place in his head. No good guys—only the small space you staked out as your own and protected from threats by any means necessary.

He breathed against the tightness in his ribs and reminded himself that this was how things worked, this was how they invariably worked. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not, as a habit, enjoy re-writing what a show's makers have already written. This story wouldn't have made sense without seeing what happened at Lindenfeld, though--it's the pivotal event of the season for these two. So buckle up and let's pivot, I guess.


	10. Chapter 10

After they left Lindenfeld, Sypha didn’t say much. Trevor kept quiet, too, having never realized how much he counted on her to start a conversation. Midday became afternoon, and still she just sat there wordlessly on the wagon’s bench. _Oh shit_ , Trevor thought, _I’ve broken her_. Of course, between the fighting and the various other horrors they hadn’t slept at all the night before, but every time he looked her eyes were wide open, hands folded in her lap.

“Do you want an apple?” Trevor finally asked.

Sypha looked at him as if surprised to find him there.

“I said, do you want an apple?”

“No, thank you,” she said.

“Then will you please tell me what is going on with you?!” 

She shook her head, started to speak, and then bit back whatever she was going to say, and the next thing Trevor knew she couldn’t seem to _stop_ talking. “I should have seen.”

“Everyone missed it, Sypha. We missed all of it.”

“Yes, but this is my _job_. I read signs and I read people. How did I miss them both, Trevor?”

“You mean the Harvest?”

“I said it was the symbol for harvest!” she exploded, throwing her hands up in a display of frustration so Sypha-like that it made him feel a bit better. “How could I fail to put together that this was _the Harvest_?!”

“I’m guessing you read about it, what, once when you were fourteen in a dusty old tome that contained seven hundred and twenty other bits of lore?”

She put her head on his arm and sulked. Or maybe it was more like brooding.

“And I should have seen the Judge for what he was.” 

“How could you?” he asked. He meant it to be a comfort, but the tone came out so bleak, so resentful, that she turned her head and just stared at him. 

“What does that mean?” 

The pressure that had built in his chest over these months of uncertainty, the pressure that grew into a sick familiarity at the Judge’s house, rose to the breaking point. It didn’t explode—Trevor had learned that men like him couldn’t afford frightening displays of anger—but it... boiled over a bit. He looked away from her, keeping his eyes fixed on a point in the road ahead. “You think that people are good. You want to protect them even when they try to hurt you. I, on the other hand, should have seen, if I hadn’t been so hellbent on doing better, on trusting people.” He wasn’t sure whether he was accusing himself or accusing Sypha for her influence, and he wasn’t sure how she’d hear it, either. 

She took offense at something else, instead. “You think I do not know what people are capable of?”

He shrugged, which was more or less a confirmation. 

“You think I’m so innocent, and...and...naive? I am a Speaker, Trevor, and a woman. If you think I can gallivant through the world throwing flowers to everyone and not realizing that I need to keep my guard up, perhaps it is _you_ who is naive. How many times have the good people of a town tried to hit you over the head in a dark alley? How many times have they tried to murder your whole family when you were helping them?”

 _Fuck you_ , he thought, but before he could fire back she clapped her hand abruptly over her mouth, eyes wide in realization. He turned away from the look of horror on her face and his insides tightened again, worse than before. Fighting, he knew how to do. Pity, on the other hand, made him sick. 

“Oh, Trevor, I am an idiot.”

“No, you’re not,” he said. “It’s fine. We’ll compare angry mob notes sometime.”

She deflated on a long sigh and dropped her forehead to his shoulder. “I just do not understand...how to win when there is nothing to be saved.” 

_And there we are_ , he thought. _Welcome to my world_. He had no desire to say that aloud, though, not with Sypha leaning against him and trying to pretend she wasn’t as wilted as she frankly looked. _I can stand anything_ , he’d thought for years. And now: _I can stand anything but this. Please don’t let her be hurt. Please let her still be Sypha._

“It’s a shit situation,” he said at last, the best he could manage in words, “But it’s not your fault.”

She murmured something inaudible. 

“What?”

“I said I did not do those evil things, but seeing what we saw still makes me feel—” a sigh— “dirty.” She looked down, keeping her eyes on her hands, which had been thoroughly cleaned of blood except for the bits under her fingernails. 

Trevor pulled the horses to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road, climbed off the wagon, and assumed the fighting stance they used in practice, acting on instinct and the overwhelming need to make things less terrible. “All right, it’s break time. Show me what you can do.”

Her look was reproachful. “I don’t want to.”

“Come on, spar me.”

“Trevor, you’re hurt.”

“I’m not.”

“You have blood on your lips.”

“If you don’t fight me, I’m going to find some night creatures and wake them up.”

She stood up on the wagon, hands on hips, eyes flashing in temper. “I said NO! I do not want to fight anymore.” 

“What do you want to do, then?!” he shouted, angry because he was frightened, because he couldn’t imagine a Sypha who’d lost her fight.

“I. DON’T. KNOW!”

He stood in the road like an idiot, breathing hard, looking at her.

“Get back on the wagon, Trevor.”

“Not until you stop being like this.”

“Please get back on the wagon.”   
  


…

  
They didn’t have another real conversation until they stopped to make camp for the night and he watched Sypha limp to the stream with their bucket.

“What’s wrong with your leg?” His tone was accusing.

She turned to look at him, surprised, then looked down at her leg as if she’d forgotten it. “Oh. I suppose we should tend our injuries before the light fades.”

They cleaned their faces and Sypha gingerly removed the wad of cloth she’d stuffed up her nostril to find that it had stopped bleeding. Trevor rinsed his mouth with salt water and it stung in a dozen places. Then they took off the makeshift bandage she’d wrapped around her thigh God knows when. “What the fuck, Sypha?! This needs stitches. What happened?”

She waved her hand at him, uninterested in telling the story. Trevor waited for a moment, angry with her carelessness, and when she refused to elaborate simply said, “All right. I need the sewing kit and the brandy.”

“You are going to drink while you sew my leg back together?” She raised her eyebrows so high they disappeared under the hair that fell in front of her face.

He gave her a flat look. “I’m going to pour the brandy on it so you don’t get an infection.” 

“Oh.” 

She took the stitching with such a blank face that Trevor worried she was going into shock, but when she pulled off his vest and shirt (he didn’t think it was a great idea to put his arms over his head), she moaned in sympathetic pain.

“I’ve had worse.”

“Are your ribs broken?” she asked, hand hovering over his side without touching.

He took an experimental breath. Oh, so that’s what the tight feeling had been about. He’d been afraid that maybe it was feelings.

“Trevor! We should have stopped to see to you long ago. Why do you do this? You’re not invulnerable.”

“I can take a hit without falling apart.” It was a stubborn answer, but at least he had Sypha frustrated with him again, and her frustration was better than the apathy.

“You sound like an advertisement for an armory. Why would you do that when you don’t have to?”

“It had slipped my mind by the time we left,” he admitted. He’d forgotten there might be a reason for the pain more specific than _everything is terrible_.

She examined him for long moments, and when she spoke, some of the tension was gone from her voice. “I can fix this. Good thing we didn’t spar earlier or you might have punctured a lung.”

“You should work on your leg.”

“Please, Trevor, a cut. I will work on my leg _and_ your ribs. And kidneys, that’s what is back here.” She put a light hand on the small of his back and he groaned. “Hold still. This, at least, I can do. And tell me if you piss blood; that’s bad. And stop getting hurt.”

He gritted his teeth. “Yes, ma’am.” 

…

By the time Sypha had finished with him and they’d picked at their dinner, they had already failed at their original plan of going to bed early. Neither of them had slept in two days. At least, Trevor thought, they’d be out the moment they hit the blankets and unconsciousness would give them some reprieve. But when they finally climbed into the wagon, Sypha took off her outer tunic—the nights had gotten warmer—and simply sat on top of the pallet with her arms curled around her knees.

“Sypha,” he said gently, wanting to push that perpetually errant curl behind her ear and not daring to touch her.

She looked at him with those big eyes, lost. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Lie down and try to sleep,” he suggested.

She did, still curled into a ball. Trevor sat up next to her, neither of them sleepy and neither of them talking. He was fine. He had expected this. His job now was to patch things up.

He drifted into a memory without intending it:

_"I’m trusting you, Belmont. Don’t make me regret it.”_

_“Everybody regrets it in the end, Alucard.”_

Sypha fell asleep before him, her breathing deep and even, if labored. Eventually he drifted off too, but sometime in the small hours he woke to the violent shaking of her back against his side. Trevor didn’t say a word, just turned and wrapped his body around hers, pressing his nose into her hair as she stopped trying to muffle her sobs. It smelled like ash. _You stupid, selfish man,_ he thought. _She’s not going to leave you now. You’ve got her trapped in your world, don’t you?_ He hated himself in the familiar way he hadn’t for the past few months.

Sypha went through both of their handkerchiefs and a good portion of the blanket before she cried herself out, and even then angry hiccoughs kept trying to break through into new fits, though her body was too exhausted to do much with that grief. At some point she drifted off again. Trevor kept watch into a gray morning. 

…

  
  


The next day they ran through their normal routines, but both of them were in pain and added sniping at each other to their list of pleasant activities. The night after that brought an attacking herd of minotaurs, completely unprovoked, and they had no choice but to fight. Beating those creatures made them feel, perversely, less guilty. It uncoupled the fighting and killing of monsters (which they both did) from the burning of families and the killing of children (which they merely failed to stop). 

Sypha cleaned up the gore from their campsite before it could draw the regular kind of predators, fire in her hands lighting up her face. She focused on the task as she’d focused on the skirmish, the dull sheen gone from her eyes.

“You feel better,” he accused.

“I feel better,” she admitted.

They both got a few hours of good sleep. 

But by the next afternoon Trevor was hot and itchy and miserable, and Sypha could barely sit up on the wagon without falling asleep, and at dinner she nearly took his head off for _nothing_ —honestly, for offering her the leftover rabbit; he wasn’t even teasing her. Trevor’s side hurt and he was exhausted, fighting a bit of a cough that he couldn’t afford to catch until his ribs had healed. When Sypha came at him because she was wired with stress and he was the only one there, he had nothing left to give her except capitulation, which must have seemed like its own aggression—apathy less caring than hostility, after all.

They still took turns driving, though neither of them bothered to choose a path, much less discuss it with the other. Or really, they’d both chosen the same thing without consciously admitting it, weaving their way back down mountain roads they’d already travelled. Retreating.

The fifth day out from Lindenfeld, Trevor’s ribs didn’t ache anymore. Sypha made porridge. She didn’t manage to produce it until close to lunch time, but it was tasty, and she was almost cheerful as she puttered over the cooking fire.

Trevor had locked away all emotion in the past week, out of necessity. He supported where it was needed and quipped when he got the chance, but he had long ago learned how to do that without opening himself up to getting kicked in the stomach. Today, he loosened the valve just a bit and tried to feel content. What he got instead was guilt.

Sypha caught it on his face as she handed him the porridge, instantly stricken with sympathy. “Are you all right?”

“Ribs,” he grunted.

“Liar.”

“Are _you_ all right?” 

She frowned at him and plopped his spoon into his bowl with a huff. “Will you stop treating me as if I am made of glass?”

“As if I would ever.”

“No, you don’t! No more making that face as if you have somehow personally destroyed my world every time you look at me.”

He winced. He hadn’t known she’d caught him at that. 

She watched him for a long moment before continuing. “I can be horrified, upset, in pieces—grieving, Trevor—without it breaking me permanently. I have done it before. You just don’t know. Now _you_ —”

 _What?_ Trevor’s head whirled with two thoughts at the same time—the first, trying unsuccessfully to recall if he’d ever seen someone grieve without it ruining their life, the second, wondering what she was yelling at him about.

“You haven’t felt a single thing about what happened in Lindenfeld, other than concern for me. Tell me why we shouldn’t be worried for you.”

He blinked. “None of this is new to me.”

“And that makes it better?”

“That means that I’m not upset and you are.” 

And there she was, just watching him again, trying to puzzle him out. “Are you happy?” she asked at last.

“Am I…? You said I was always sad,” he remembered, though he didn’t mean it to be an answer to her question.

“You were. But I think for these last months you have been happy. And now—”

“Sypha, I’m not sad. I just don’t feel anything about Lindenfeld.”

“That’s the same thing!” 

Trevor blinked again, caught without a reply. He hadn’t thought of it that way before, and he wasn’t sure he agreed.

“I have worked hard,” she said, “to stay open to pain, because then I am open to joy as well. Sadness isn’t pain; it’s the absence of joy.”

Trevor wondered where _discomfort with conversations about his own emotions_ fell on her feelings chart. “Well, that is some deep Speaker philosophy,” he said, hoping to end the subject.

She balled her hand into a fist and pushed gently at his jaw, miming a punch, the gesture affectionate. 

They got on the road by midday. By mid-afternoon they were sleepy and hot, letting the horses plod along, lulled by the rhythm of the wagon. “I’ve been thinking,” Sypha said from her permanent perch on his arm.

“Great,” he muttered, just to rile her.

She shoved his shoulder— “You have to be nice to me. I’m traumatized—” and he felt an intense love for how full of shit she was.

“What have you been thinking, Sypha?”

“I have been thinking...that we did a good thing, after all.”

“Oh, yes? Which one?”

But now she gave him a dangerous look, the one that meant her feelings were on the verge of being genuinely hurt if he kept dismissing her. So he listened. “We did not save the people of Lindenfeld. But Trevor...we nearly died closing the Infinite Corridor. And we _closed_ it. What...what would have happened if we had lost?”

Trevor hadn’t spent much time thinking about that because there was no need to think about the bad things that hadn’t happened when he had more than enough on his plate with the bad things that _had_ happened. “Don’t know.”

“It would have stayed open permanently, right?”

“Likely, yes.”

“And Dracula would have come back.”

“I suppose.”

“And an entire world full of those creatures we fought.”

He hadn’t considered it in quite this way. He tried to concentrate on one life-or-death situation at a time.

“So we saved the world. Again.”

“Does that make you feel better?”

She sighed. “Not really. But it is good to keep things in perspective.”

“Who ever knew that you could be so sensible?”

The horses clop-clopped to a halt and they both looked up in surprise as their little path dead-ended into the main road at the foot of the mountain. Trevor realized that he knew the place and saw Sypha startle with the same thought. They met each other’s eyes and the recognition of what they’d been doing flashed in both of them. It was reasonable, perfectly reasonable, to come down the trail from the mountain, where they’d been picking off bands of night creatures in the wilderness. If they wanted to go on to the next city, they would have to pass this way. But that hadn’t been their intention. Without discussing it, they’d been licking their wounds, choosing the path that meant comfort. They’d been retracing their steps towards… the site of their real victory, the one that had bound them together. The Belmont Hold. Dracula’s Castle. Alucard.

“Which way?” he asked. East towards Braila. West towards Alucard. 

Sypha looking down that road to the west, wistful. _Home_ , said her face. _I want to go home_. Then she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and said, “Well, the remains of Dracula’s army will be thicker towards Braila still, yes?”

“Makes sense to me,” Trevor said in his most noncommittal tone.

“I think,” she tilted her chin, making herself be brave, “We go east. We press on to Braila.”

He gave the horses a flick of the reins. “Braila it is, then.”


	11. Epilogue

Alucard had just come back from finishing off a deer, and was consequently still in wolf form, when he felt the familiar lurch.

No. It couldn’t be.

Human again so he could see out the window, he found that the outside world was indeed growing blurry, skidding sideways out of visibility.

No sound of engines humming, as there hadn’t been for months. The castle was broken. It was still broken. It couldn’t move.

Silently, the world outside his window fizzled, blurred again, and disappeared into a cloud of amorphous smoke. When he blinked, it resolved itself into dark forest, the pines smaller and denser than he was accustomed to, peppered with snow despite the season.

A piece of machinery that’s smashed to pieces can’t malfunction. Something had moved the castle intentionally.

Under other circumstances he might have cleaned his face and chest, still gruesome with deer’s blood. But “other circumstances” didn’t mean facing an unknown threat, and he hadn’t felt particularly compelled to be presentable since…

Suffice it to say there was no possible good outcome to this situation. He called his sword to his hand, dressing hurriedly in shirt and pants only after he was armed. Then he marched out the front door, heard the other person’s drumming heartbeat and heavy breathing as soon as his foot left the threshold, and caught the charging enemy by the neck before they even saw him.

Sypha. Good God.

He dropped her into the snow and watched her cough without offering a bit of help, exactly as he’d planned to do when they met again. He’d changed. No use making it harder on either of them than necessary. “You moved the castle?”

She nodded, still recovering her breath. The castle was perched… high up, the air thin as well as chill. On either side, a wall of mountains. How far uphill had she run to get to him? 

“The engines are broken.”

“Didn’t use the engines. Used magic,” she panted.

“When did you learn to operate a locating mirror?”

“Today.” The tone of her voice and the frankly undeserved look of anger she gave him said _this is a waste of our time._ She didn’t remark on the blood congealing down his face and chest.

“That was a bit presumptuous, don’t you think? What makes you think I want to be here? And—” he hated himself for showing curiosity— “where is here, anyway?” 

“Styria.” 

“You brought the castle all the way to Styria? What, Buda wasn’t far enough for you?!”

Still catching her breath, Sypha gave no answer. 

This wasn’t how he’d imagined their next meeting. In his mind, she and Trevor would saunter up to the castle, careless, only to be stopped by the gruesome, rotting bodies at his gate. They would approach with weapons drawn. He would float down from the upper staircase. Perhaps he and Trevor would fight again. And what would Sypha do? He could never bear to plan out that part. At any rate, they would know that he, like his father, was not to be taken advantage of. That was the important part, not the fight, but that they realized the petty evils of human beings and understood that he would not be coaxed into friendship like a stray cat, not anymore.

He had not imagined this, Sypha gasping at his feet, refusing to pick herself up out of the snow, refusing to talk. She was supposed to question him. _What happened, Alucard? How did this happen?_ She hadn’t been there when he was alone and needed her, and now he was changed in a way that couldn’t be undone. She was supposed to question him so that he could deny her answers.

But then she did rise from the ground, one arm cradling her ribs, lurid red and purple bruises blooming across one side of her face when her hood fell back. The snow beneath her was stained red with blood.

 _How did this happen?_ he meant to ask. Instead, he said, “Where is Trevor?”

She pointed to the next peak and Alucard made out the outline of a fortress, darker against the darkening sky. Fuck. He knew that place, knew the four women who resided there and called themselves sisters. Fuck.

Sypha caught her breath, looked him straight in the eyes, fierce and angry and scared, and said, “Help me.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just couldn't leave Alucard there alone.


End file.
